If you wanted a Royal Pop pocket watch from the Swatch store in Somerset Collection, that time has passed.
The watch collection, a collaboration between Swatch and luxury brand Audemars Piguet, will not be sold at the Somerset store after it was shut down for two days over safety concerns surrounding the worldwide launch of the watches May 16. Hundreds of people showed up before the mall opened that day in a scene that a security officer described as “chaos.”
On May 18, a manager who declined to comment instead taped signs to the store’s front windows, which read, “We are no longer selling the AP X Swatch collection in this location. Please refer to Swatch.com for further information.”
A corporate contact for Swatch did not immediately return a request for comment.
Swatch store crowded, despite Royal Pop snafu
The Somerset Swatch store still had a steady stream of customers on Monday (as did the mall as a whole, a stark contrast to some other regional malls), with many seeking information about the Audemars Piguet x Swatch pocket watches, which have a list price of $400.
Rebecca Suell said she could never afford a watch that costs $30,000, typically the base retail for an Audemars Piguet, and wanted to see if the luxury brand’s collaboration with Swatch was of “similar quality.”
“I wanted to see if it was worth all the rage,” the West Bloomfield resident said as she left the store unable to view any of the watches in the new collection.
First Swatch, someday, Rolex
John Saroki, also of West Bloomfield, said he had also wanted to look at getting one of the watches for his 7-year-old son, Hudson.
“I want to get him into high-end watches so he values them when he is older,” said Saroki, himself a fan of Rolex.
He added that the Royal Pop watches had seemed like a nicer option that wouldn’t break his heart if his son broke it. With the demand now making the watches hard to get and pushing prices upward online, Saroki said he won’t be buying one.
John Williams of Troy won’t be getting one either, but did stop at the store on Monday anyway.
“I wanted to look at it to see what the hype was about,” he said.
Madi Bashir, 20, kept right on walking past the Swatch store, slightly baffled by the watch craze.
“I’m not that big on materialistic watches,” the Waterford resident and Apple watch owner said with a shrug. “It’s interesting … Watches are more of a fashion statement. I think it’s something new and that’s why it’s exciting.”
Collector frenzy is driving up prices
Swatch quartz battery watches launched in the 1980s and were all the rage, but faded in popularity by the 1990s.
The current partnership with Audemars Piguet follows an earlier team-up with high-end watchmaker Omega to produce the MoonSwatch, which started at $260. Those models were quickly snapped up by collectors and sell on the secondary market for much more.
The new Royal Pop watches are demanding even more attention. The watches already are commanding between $1400 and $2200 on StockX, an exchange for luxury goods, with one seller asking a whopping $22,000.
Contact reporter Susan Bromley at sbromley@hometownlife.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: No Royal Pop at Swatch in Troy; collectors still clamor for watches
Reporting by Susan Bromley, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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