October 10, 2024 • 44 mins
The story of the Swatch is super cool and one of the great retail successes. Listen in today to find out just why a country known for the finest craftsmanship started making plastic watches for the masses.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're just getting totally
tubular here on Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
You joke about the eighties, my friend, but swatches are
still very, very popular.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
I never joke about the eighties. I'm quite serious about
the eighties.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
That's right, we're talking about swatches. If you don't know
what a swatch is, you may not be into watches.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Or fun.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
You may not be a gen xer. Although, like I said,
they're still around. I have recently gotten into watches for
the first time in my life. Really, Like I tried
to wear a watch. I remember when I was in
like seventh grade, and because I thought it kind of
looked cool. That was probably during the fake glasses period. Okay,
(00:59):
is it a fake No, it was a real watch,
but it never really took. And I've always kind of
said that I don't want things on my wrist. But
I got a watch. I got a couple of watches
about four months ago. I started just researching watches and
how they're made, and I was really just knocked out
(01:19):
by the craftsmanship, and so I got a couple of watches,
and I the other reason was partially so I could
look for the time and date without picking up my phone,
because I feel like that then keeps me on the phone.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
That's a great, great idea.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Yeah, so it really works, and I love my watch
a lot. And today I bought this swatch.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Oh cool, which which kind is it a newer kind?
Is it vintage? Is it?
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Well, it's it's newer, but you know, they they a
lot of the styles look like they did back then.
It's it's gonna be a good, like kind of fun
summer watch. It's not too wacky, but it's blue and
yellow and kind of has a big face. And it's
one hundred and twenty bucks, which is not nothing but
a quality watch for you know, a little over one
(02:09):
hundred dollars is a really good deal. These days, watches
are super expensive.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Yeah, it really is. And that's one thing about swatches
is they've kept their prices down all these years.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
It's about the same with inflation.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yeah, yeah, and you could get swatches that are definitely
what they sold them for back in the eighties adjusted
for inflation. They also have some that are like a
little more expensive, and then I think the most expensive one.
Dave helped us with this. He turned up when that
was like just over three hundred dollars. And they do
have some like collaborations with some higher end watch companies
(02:43):
that are more expensive than that. But if you just
get a Swatch Swatch, the most you're going to spend
is about three hundred bucks. So yeah, yeah, so you
me and I when we went on our honeymoon, we
were walking around the mall as you do on your
honeymoon in Juai, and we just popped in a Swatch
store and we got like his in her the I
(03:05):
guess the jellyfish like she got pink and I got
blue watches. Even that's the clear one, right yeah, even Yeah,
a watch having that level of sentimentality, I still can't
just wear. I just couldn't wear it. I can't have
something on my wrist right. But over the years we
still kind of collected some swatches here there, and now
(03:28):
our collection Chuck includes one of those giant Swatch wall
clocks in a region one of and it's one of
the coolest things we own.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Yeah. I had one of those, but it was a
knockoff of course it was a switch because you and
I very famously were not allowed basically any brand name,
right because we couldn't afford it. So I had I
had a knockoff whatever, like the Kmart version of that
was hanging hanging on my wall.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
That's awesome. What did it look like?
Speaker 3 (03:59):
It looked like a watch, you know, that's what yours
looks like, right, Like it's got the big band and everything,
and you just it's like hanging a big watch.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah, it's ours. Is So they built like actual seven
foot tall with the band stretched out wall clocks called
the Maxi that were like giant versions of the actual
kinds of swatches you could buy on your wrist, right,
And the one we have is called I think the
White Memphis Style and it's from like nineteen eighty four,
(04:26):
I think something like that. And then we went and
got the actual watch to match.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Did you frame it next to it?
Speaker 2 (04:33):
No, we just have it somewhere, so we pick it
up and look at it once in a while we're like, wow,
it really looks a lot like our wall clock.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Well, I just got to say, I'm not going to
try and talk you in anything, but as someone who
also did not light something on the wrist. I really
have gotten used to it, and it's to the point
now where it feels a little weird when I don't
have it on. That was fast, Yeah, and it's it's
a good, you know, good looking watch. It's kind of
nice to be like an adult and have a an
(05:00):
actual watch and not an Apple watch or something.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Right. So, one other thing about swatches that drove me crazy.
There's a distinct ticking sound that I couldn't not hear,
and I came to find that it was actually, I guess,
kind of a trait of swatches. I saw that from
researching this that swatches make a ticking sound and it's
(05:25):
because of the design, the very unique design they have,
which it will we'll get to that eventually, and when
we do, it's going to be eye popping.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Do you just keep waiting for sixty minutes to come
on TV?
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Yeah? I do, and then I just bury my head
under pillows till it's over all. Right.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Should we get into this thing, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Let's because what's interesting to me, Chuck, is that swatches
were born out of a mega crisis in Switzerland in
the beginning of the seventies.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Yes, absolutely, everyone, Well, maybe not everyone. If you've never
don't know anything about watches, you may not know that
Switzerland is renowned for their watches. If you've ever heard
the term runs like a Swiss watch, that's not because
they're kreddy and that they're they break down and that
they don't keep good time. It's because they have long
(06:12):
been a country that just has amazing craftsmanship with not
only you know, putting watches together, but manufacturing the tiny
little parts and everything. That's you know, if you've heard
of Rolex and Cardier and Omega, like all these really
nice watch brands, they're coming out of Switzerland and they
always have been.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah, and one of the reasons why they're so ridiculously
high priced is that craftsmanship. Yeah, And that's just how
it was. Like, if you wanted a nice watch, you
bought a Swiss watch, and you paid through the nose
for it. And that's that was life until the Japanese
came along, Yes, and they said, we've got it. We
have an idea here. The Japanese are famous, chuck famous
(06:54):
for improving upon other people's inventions, just taking them and
making them just amazing. And this is a really good
example of that. Seiko introduced a watch called the Astron
on Christmas Day in nineteen sixty nine, and it completely
shook the watch world because the Astron was the world's
first courts watch and that that just changed the whole
(07:16):
the whole game, because you can make a court's watch
for very cheap and they keep much better time than
a traditional movement.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Yeah, I mean it's interesting. They're they're cheaper, they last longer.
I guess there isn't the you know, the the fame
that attaches itself to, you know, a Swiss watch that's
made from all tiny little parts. But you can't argue
with quartz as a as an improvement. I'm hesitant to
(07:46):
almost say it's like clearly better, because you know, a
great mechanical watch is still a wonder to behold and
keeps really good time. But courts came along and it
was very disruptive to the industry. We talked a little
bit about court What.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Was that in it was semirismic clocks.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
I felt even more recent than that, though, now, no, that.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Was pretty recently. It was only a few months ago,
was and that nuts?
Speaker 3 (08:10):
Yeah, it seems like a few years and in the
best way possible, by the way. But quartz oscillates at
thirty two thousand, seven hundred and sixty eight times per second.
And when you have quartz as a part of your watch,
well not circuitry, but just as a part of it circuitry,
oh is it okay? Great? Then you can cut back
(08:34):
on a lot of those other little tiny parts and
you can make a thinner watch, like beyond the fact
that it just runs better and lasts longer. They can
be smaller and you don't have as many tiny little
parts that eventually could maybe break.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
No, because in a traditional mechanical watch, when you wind it,
you're tensing. You're adding tension to a spring, and then
that spring slowly unwinds and it drives all these gears
and everything, and that's how it keeps track of the time.
And that's why if you look at a traditional mechanical watch,
the second hand that keeps track of the seconds goes
in a sweeping motion, an unbroken sweeping motion all around
(09:07):
the face. A courtz watch just ticks off one second
at a time. The second hand moves every second, and
the reason why is because that circuitry has counted thirty two,
seven hundred and sixty eight pulses and now it's time
to advance one second. So that's a huge difference. But yeah,
just the like you were saying, like, yes, courts is
(09:29):
obviously better, but in the way that like an advancement
tech in technology is better, that doesn't mean that the
craftsmanship that's competing with is any worse. And in some
ways it makes that craftsmanship, you know, that much more
desirable down the road.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Yeah, for sure. But these courtz watches came in from
Japan in the nineteen seventies after the debut in sixty
nine that you mentioned. Well, I guess that was Christmas
sixty nine, so.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
The Summer of Love, the Christmas of Love.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Just a handful of days before the seventies, I think
right before Oh no, I guess that was seventies into
the eighties and Bookie.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Nights, Yeah that was that was like mid to late seventies.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Yeah. Well, but that famous New Year's Eve scene when
oh yeah that's his name. You know, man, what a
bum Yeah, that's a big bummer. Anyway, courts watches come along,
they really disrupt the industry, and all of a sudden,
Switzerland found itself in a sort of a watch crisis.
Before this broke out before courts came along, they controlled
(10:31):
fifty percent of the whole watch market in the world.
And then by nineteen seventy seven, a mere seven years
after the debut of these Japanese courts watches, Seiko became
the largest watchmaker by revenue in the world, and Switzerland
saw their industry fall off from believe between seventy seven
(10:52):
and eighty three, from forty three percent to less than
fifteen percent, which is like a real, real financial crisis.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Yet it's you don't even have to know what a
number is to know that that's a massive financial crisis, right, Yeah,
And this is not just a couple of companies, This
is the entire Swiss watchmaking industry, which was a huge
part of the Swiss economy for centuries, right, So it
was a really it was a national crisis in Switzerland.
And so these companies that make up the Swiss Swiss
(11:21):
watch making industry were just dropping like flies. And it
came down to a couple like really major companies that
own brands like Omiga and Long Jeans and Tissou, like
just really high end Swiss watch brands. The two companies
were Alamine Switzirich Urin Industry Agre, my apologies to our
(11:45):
German listeners who we know were out there. And then
the other one is the Societa Swissport Industry or leger SA,
and I said that with a weird Spanish accent, but
that's in French. And these two companies were like mega
companies and they were like golias failing falling over. Essentially
(12:06):
they were in midfall.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Yeah, in mid free fall. And so what usually would
happen in a case like this with these big corporations
as you would take the assets that each company has,
like you know, these individual brands that they own, sell
them off, hopefully make some money doing that, and then
that's basically it. But a guy named Nicholas and this
(12:28):
is just I love this kind of story when someone
comes along and just says, no, we're not doing that.
And that was the case with Nicholas G. Hyak, who
if you ask people in Switzerland, in fact, there was
an actual survey like who were the best the best
with people of all time and they said Albert Einstein,
(12:49):
Henri Dunant, who created the red Cross in the Geneva convention,
and then Nicholas Hyak, who put his foot down and
said no, we're not selling these things off. We're going
to merge together these two big companies and we're going
to start making courts watches.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Yeah. He was the head of a marketing consulting firm,
essentially business consulting firm, and they were like, just come
in and figure out the best way to sell these
companies off for parts to the highest bidder, and like
you said, he said, no, I've got a much better idea.
And it wasn't like they were just like, oh, okay,
go do that. We don't care. We're eating metzger roach
(13:28):
tie over here, so who cares. They were very much
involved in this, and he had to convince the entire
Swiss watchmaking industry yeah, and all the Swiss banks that
were backing the industry and that would eventually back this merger, like, guys,
we need to merge these two companies, like Chuck will
eventually say on this podcast called Stuff you Should Know
(13:48):
years from now, and we need to make our we
need to like start making money handover fist really quick,
and we're not going to do that with these luxury brands.
We need to figure out how to make a very cheap,
very Swiss watch and get it to market asap.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Yeah, but that's the key there that you mentioned, Like
they weren't saying, hey, let's get parts from Japan and
just kind of build from there. They were like, we're
going to make these things in Switzerland. We're going to
put our Swiss you know, our country's name behind these
basically which had so much pride in their you know,
watch craftsmanship, and we're going to make them all here
(14:26):
and that's going to be the difference. And he did
not invent or design the Swatch. He came up with
this idea for this merger. There had been prototypes of
this Swatch a couple of years before, I think nineteen
eighty one, two full years before this merger. There was
one called the Popularis, which was a courts watch. It's,
you know, not my style is very of the time
(14:49):
in eighty one, but it's it was thin and kind
of groovy looking, don't you think?
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Sure? Yeah, And that was it.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
That was the first one, but it was not a Swatch.
When Hyatt took over in eighty three, he was like,
we got to make these low en watches, and we
got to start making them like stylish. We want someone
to be able to go out and buy a cheap watch,
maybe who's never owned a watch before, because they were expensive.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
M Luckily, he had some really good employees under his
well employee in these two merged companies. One of them
was a guy named Ernest tom Key. He's considered one
of the other fathers of Swatch. He had a couple
of designers, Jacques Muller and Elmar Mack working under him,
and between these three together you had some amazing designers
(15:37):
but also just really smart watch engineers. And tom Ky
in particular had been working for a good decade or
so trying to make the world's thinnest watch. Yeah, and
eventually he did. It was a watch called the Delirium.
It was less than two millimeters thick, that's five sixty
fourths of an inch thick, a watch with all of
(15:59):
the movie mints. And it wasn't a mechanical watch. It
was quartz, but it was still super duper thin even
for a quartz watch. And in fact, if you watch
Scarface Tony Montana's wearing one of these, it was just
a big, big deal. It was a very expensive watch
just because it was so thin, and also it was Swiss,
so if you put these guys who are really good
at designing and really good at engineering with fewer and
(16:20):
fewer parts in smaller and smaller spaces together, you've got
the basis for creating a brand new kind of watch
that Switzerland had never produced before, which is cheap, Swiss
and innovative and stylish.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Yeah, it's funny. It was very of the time, like thin, thin,
thin watches was a big thing back then. I kind
of even remember that. Yeah, I feel like and you know,
I've done a little bit of research since I've gotten
into watches a little bit, but it seems like seems
like chunky watches are kind of the thing now and
that very sort of thin even maybe rectangular bezel kind
(16:57):
of watch is and the bezel is just the you know,
the glass piece that sits over the top of everything
to protect it.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
You have been doing your research, Well.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
There's only a handful of watch parts and you got
to know what they are. Okay, but that doesn't seem
to be very in as in style anymore. But they
would get those parts down, you know, even for a
courtz watch. I think a typical courts watch had about
ninety one parts. They got that down all the way
to fifty one. They called it within the company Revolution
(17:26):
fifty one, and it was it was a big deal.
Like it was. I mean, they're still around and still
a huge company for all these reasons.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Yeah, And okay, so that's going on. You've got Tom
Key creating watches with fewer and fewer parts. At the
same time, Elmar Mack he had this dream to start
using plastic injection molding, yeah, to make watches. And rather
than get approval to buy a plastic injection molding machine,
which was like half a million marks I think at
(17:57):
the time, he dis ordered it. And so luckily they
had this plastic injection molding machine and they used it
to create the first watches, and that helped them reduce
the number of movements even more because a lot of
the movement parts are what mount the actual moving parts
to the watch. And what they did was they built
(18:20):
in all of those parts that mount the movement to
the watch into the case itself, so it was all
one solid part and that even further dropped the number
of moving parts needed that much more in the original
swatches that came out.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Look at you, you said, case, what did that's a
watch part?
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Oh? Thanks? I thought I'd been saying, like, Kasi this
whole time, You're finally You're like, you finally got it, Jos.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
All right, shall we take a break. Yeah, all right,
let's take our first break here and we come back.
We'll talk a little bit more about the early days
of this swatch. Okay, so we're back with Swatches. Switzerland
(19:16):
has this great idea, but they had a little bit
of a just sort of an early challenge on their hands.
You know. They found how to reduce the parts and
make everything cheaper, which was great, but they eventually looked
around their factory and said, here's the deal. We want
to make these all here, but everyone here makes a
ton of money. Like Switzerland just for regular old jobs
(19:38):
has the highest, you know, some of the highest wages
in the world, at least it has for a long time.
So you know, they could have outsourced. They could have
gotten some parts from different you know, countries in the
world and have them brought in and maybe just assembled
in Switzerland. But they held firm and they said, no,
we're not going to do it. We need to just
innovate and get manufacturing technologies that are so advanced that
(20:03):
we can get these things down to like, you know,
thirty to fifty bucks and they were able to do it.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Yeah, that's one of the reasons why Hayek or Hyak
is so revered. Not only did he challenge the watchmakers
in Switzerland to make a cheap Swiss Swiss watch, he
also was like, now you have to redesign how we
make watches from the ground up. And they were successful
and they ended up coming up with the Swatch. And
(20:31):
as much as that is a like the innovation to
the whole thing is impressive, the marketing piece to swatches was.
I mean it was just as just as much a
part of Swatch is this new way of making watches
because Hyak was he saw watches a little differently. He
was an outsider, and up to that point, if you
(20:53):
made watches, you considered watches jewelry, high end jewelry essentially. Yeah,
and he was like, no, this is you're overthinking watches,
or at least you're overthinking this watch that we're making.
These are not jewelry. We're gonna make them fashion statements,
like fashion items. And just like say ties or shoes,
and you have more than one tie, and you have
(21:14):
more than one pair of shoes. We're gonna make it
so these people who are buying our watches want more
than one watch. It's gonna be amazing guys.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Yeah, and they went in. I mean it was a
huge risk, but you know, he painted a picture of like,
imagine a world where teenagers want four and five of
these and all of a sudden they're you know, over
the course of a few years, they're investing you know,
two or three hundred dollars in their watch collection. And
(21:44):
that's a good start, and you know, it could be
a second watch for people. And that was in fact,
if you've always thought this watch was Swiss plus Watch,
you're probably right. But other people, including Hayek, have said
it was actually a mashup of Second Watch. But you know,
they had a marketing people that came in. There was
(22:05):
a guy, a consultant named Franz Schprecher. He supposedly coined
the name Swatch, and he officially said, no, it was
Swiss plus Watch. Other people in the company did say
second Watch. So either way you get Swatch. My money
is on officially probably Swiss Watch me too.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
That's what I'm going with.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
But who cares. It's a Swatch.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Yeah, And The first twelve Swatches came out in nineteen
eighty three March. First they debuted in Switzerland, Germany and
the UK. And if you go look back at the
original twelve Swatches, you'd be like, those are swatches. You
can tell it's got some swatch quality to it, but
it just is so boring and stayed in middle of
(22:50):
the road as far as its design goes. And it
turns out that was a deliberate decision because as they
were about to go to market with these things, apparently everybody,
including Hyatt, got cold feet and was like, what happens
if Yeah, so they decided to go with the colors
that the Swiss Army uses in their uniforms. So if
(23:15):
it was a flop, they could turn around to the
Swiss Army and be like, why don't you buy all
these surplus watches? Can at least try to break even here?
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Yeah? Liked you? Guys said great with your knives, so
imagine what you could do with a watch.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Yeah. Have you seen Swiss Army Man?
Speaker 3 (23:31):
Yes? I have?
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Okay, got you? Yes?
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Did you like it?
Speaker 2 (23:36):
I did in a lot of ways. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Yeah, it's a crazy movie. The directors of everything everywhere
all at once.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Right, Oh, that makes sense. I didn't know that. That
definitely makes sense now.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
Yeah, yeah, they were always sort of on the outside
there with those wacky ideas.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Yeah for sure.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
All right, So they were selling these first ones for
about fifty pounds in the UK, those twelve watches sold
even though they were people had no idea what they
were in for with this watch based on these twelve,
but they still loved them. They sold very well. Summer
of eighty three comes along and they had another brilliant
you know, one of the most brilliant marketing marketed companies
(24:17):
of all time probably was its Swatch. But they said, hey,
I don't even think people are saying the term drops yet.
Maybe they were. I'm kind of curious when that started.
A shoe drop or a jersey drop or something, or
a hat drop. But they had a Swatch drop called
the jellyfish. My brother had one of these, and I
(24:39):
was texting him yesterday and I was like, did you
have the original nineteen eighty three jellyfish that was the
clear one? And he said he sold it a little
while ago for a little bit of money, and he said,
I don't think it was one of the first years
and he said, why is that a big deal? Or
he didn't know it was the first year. He said,
why was the eighty three a big deal? It's like, well,
that was the first one, if I remember. He got
(25:01):
it a couple of years later, and you can still
they still make like versions of the Jellyfish now. But
it took off once the Jellyfish hit and the idea
of these drops, these special releases. They would release collections
in the fall in the spring, and then one off
specials once a year and they were huge.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Yeah. I think they even did seasonal specials, so a
few times a year. But the fact that these were
just you know, they'd come and go pretty quickly, like
they'd make a limited amount, it would sell out really quickly.
People started collecting swatches. There was a I can't remember
deliberate scarcity, I guess yeah, created by the seasonal one offs, right,
(25:44):
and that helped propel swatch like from watchmaker to this
is exactly what Hayek was going for. These are fashion items,
they're fashion statements. They're desirable things that people can buy
multiple ones of and show you know who they are
inside by wearing something on the outside.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
Essentially, Yeah, ironically, maybe wearing a swatch with your muscle
shirt of the Japanese flag because those were big.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Don't forget the headband, the matching headband.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
I had to have the matching headband. We played an
eighties set our bandit at the porch Fest in our
neighborhood a few years ago, and I wore like an
MTV shirt and these like Neon glasses and stuff, and
I had the headband. I was like, geez, is that
even something you can do these days? Like wear a
headband of a Japanese flag. Certain, I'm not even sure
if I feel good about it, but I didn't do
(26:37):
it in the end.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Okay, yeah, that's probably good because you know those hipsters
will throw beer bottles at you on stage, like the
Blues Brothers.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
Yeah, well but we have a a chicken wire protecting us,
so it's fine.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Luckily. I mean, you got to if you're going to
wear a Japanese headband in twenty twenty three. Yeah, let's
see where were we?
Speaker 3 (26:55):
Well, I guess we can go to eighty five, because
that's when that's when things really change, right.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Yeah, So I guess the whole thing was kind of
like you said, they started they sold pretty well initially,
and then when they started to add the one offs
like that, that became like a really big deal. But
nineteen eighty five was when Swatch expanded even further out,
and actually I think eighty four, yeah, is when they
started to expand they were kind of they like the
(27:24):
Red Bull model of like, oh, that's a crazy sport,
let's let's sponsor that. Swatch looked around as like this
is super cool and the kids are into this, let's
sponsor this or that or this, And what they came
up with first was the Swatchwatch New York City fresh Fest,
which is considered the first hip hop concert tour ever.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Yeah, it was Houdini and Curtis Blow and Run, DMC
fat Boys I saw. I think they did it for
a few years because it saw where like the Beastie
Boys opened up. But yeah, that had to have been
like that maybe second or third year. But it was
a big deal and they were on the leading edge
of kind of everything that was cool in the early
to mid eighties. So of course what you're gonna have
(28:06):
is people trying to get in on that. And they
had like the cheap, cheap knockoffs, like literally some of
them were named Watch, Mwatch and things like that. But
like legitimate brands like Guest Genes, Guests started making watches
and some other big eighties brands started getting in there
on the watch scene, like clearly ripping off swatches.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Yeah, one brand was Armitron's watch. Yeah, I don't know
what that is, but I went back and looked at him,
and I was like, these are actually kind of cool.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
They were, They were all cool.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
They actually pushed the envelope a little further, Like Swatch
came along and like laid the groundwork for other people
to go even more crazy with their watches, and Armitron
was one of them. And so there's nothing wrong with
some friendly competition. Swatch had no problems with that. What
Swatch had a problem with was the counterfeit that were
flooding the market. Yeah, about as fast as genuine swatches
(29:05):
were selling.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Yeah, watches seem to be one of the most counterfeited
sort of high end items, and I guess in this
case not as high end, but you know, fake Rolex's.
There's always been a market for counterfeit watches, and watches
was no different. They were selling eleven thousand legitimate watches
a day a day in nineteen eighty four, and they
(29:27):
estimated that ten thousand fakes were being imported every day.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Man, that's crazy. Yeah, you said that. They were kind
of trying to get their fingers into every cool thing
that was emerging at the time. Another thing I saw
was that they sponsored the Impact skateboarding tour, Oh yeah,
starting in nineteen eighty eight. That was a big one too.
And then also one of the other things Swatch became
really famous for was collaborating with artists like the hottest
(29:54):
artists of the day. And the big one, the one
that really kind of put it all over the top,
was one the early ones. In nineteen eighty six, they
had Keith Haring designed four different watches, and they are today,
I think, the most coveted swatches like ever by collectors.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Yeah for sure. I mean they're cool looking, it's Keith
Haring and it's on a watch base, So what more
do you need to know? They went to Andy Warhol
first and he said, no, I don't have time for this,
he said, but you should get this guy, Keith Haring.
I think if you have an entire like primo collection
of those four you can get, you know, up to
(30:33):
one hundred grand for those four watches at auction.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Yeah. And the way that you tell their primo is
you take your pinky and you dab it on the
watch bezel, Yeah, and stick it to your tongue or
maybe your gum, and you're like, yeah, it's a primo
watch Man.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
This is pure, pure bezel.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
So they also, aside from hering, they collaborate with a
bunch of other artists. Yoko Ono, Yeah, delivered one or
a bunch of butts naked bottoms. That's a super yoko
on a thing to do. Pigicasso, the pig that paints.
I can't believe that they didn't clean up the art
that they used from him. It's just too it's too appealing.
(31:15):
It's not there's no mess ups in it, you know
what I mean? Yeah, I just I think they may
have done that. And then Alfred Hope hoof Kunst, hoof Kunst.
What would you say, mister Laffey.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Uh, Alfred, I would probably say a half kunst.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
I'm pretty sure I said that in one of the
five times I tried it.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
I'm sure you did well.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Anyway, he had another legendary release in nineteen ninety one,
he designed three swatches that were basically food. It looked
like food. One is bacon and eggs, one's a disturbing
looking cucumber, puffy cucumber, and otherre's a tomato. And then
the big marketing thing that came up with for this
is that in Europe you bought them in the grocery
(32:01):
aisles of a supermarket. That's where you could get those swatches,
which is kind of cool.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
Yeah, I feel like you could get swatches in a
lot of different places, like maybe if you lived in
a big enough city you had an actual swatch store,
But didn't they just sell them at like, you know,
the poster headshops and places like that too.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Yeah, that was another thing too. You could also get
them at like department stores, Like you could get them
all over the place, right, Yeah, and they figured that out,
I read after they tried the traditional route, which is
sending them to jewelry stores, and in the US they
did not catch on immediately because they're the main stores
(32:41):
that they tried to sell swatches through to the United
States first were jewelry stores in San Antonio, Texas. Yeah,
and they didn't sell very well. They went back to
the drawing board, They're like, let's try this a different way,
and then they started to sell them all over the place,
and then they took off very quickly in the US
after that, and they're like, Middle America doesn't want these,
so we're going to go to the coasts. And the
(33:03):
coasts supported Swatch for a very long time until they
caught on. In the Midwest.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
They couldn't even sell there. There's no basement in the
Alamos watch there, it's right, So you know that was trouble.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Mm hmm. I lived in the Midwest. I grew up
in the Midwest, and I don't think I got my
first watch until nineteen eighty six. Probably.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
You know, my first Swatch is coming in the mail
in the next week. I've never owned one.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Yeah, I can't wait to see that one when it arrives.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Yeah. Part of it was it, like I said, I
didn't wear watches back then, But I don't know. I
think the other thing is just like, I mean, you're
lucky you got one because you kind of grew up
how I did, which was like, hey, if it's cool
and cost money, you're not getting it.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah. No, for sure, I did too. I wore Knights
of the round table shirts see more than once.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
But good for you got that swatch.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
You know. I worked myself to the bone. Yeah, cuttlawns,
were walking the dog, cutting lawns, taking out the trash.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
So you bought it yourself then, it wasn't like a
Christmas gift.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
No, I my parents still got it for me.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
It didn't make that much money, but I think it's
still it were only like thirty or forty dollars.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
But yeah, back then that was a lot of dough.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Though it was, but it was still most people with
a job could afford us watch no problem. Essentially. I
was just ten, you know.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
Yeah, I was too busy spending you know, eight dollars
to go to concerts and arenas when I was twelve
years old for my bus boy wages.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
That's awesome. I wait, twelve, You started working at twelve, Josh.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
I was a busboy at a barbecue restaurant when I
was twelve years old.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
No, I know. That's where the guy put his foot
in the Brunswick stew. That's legendary. Butwell I never caught
on that it was twelve.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
It was twelve. It was totally illegal and under the table.
Uh yeah, and it's what's so funny, as I'm trying
to imagine everyone who doesn't know that Brunswicks two story
wondering what in the world you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
You can go listen to Restaurant Health Inspections. Is the
story where that dates?
Speaker 3 (34:59):
Oh okay, yeah, and it's popped up weirdly several times.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Well, it's kind of an important story.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
It's funny. It just came up last night. We were
watching an episode of The Bear, which, by the way,
I don't like this new season. I'm not sure if
you're into it or not.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
I couldn't get into I watched the first episode or two,
and I just it wasn't for.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
Me, the whole show or the new season. The whole
show okay, yeah, first two seasons good, I'm not liking
this one anyway. There was a scene in the walk
in cooler where the guy's just sitting in there, and
I was like, oh God, I used to love the
walk in cooler because it always gets so hot and
I would be working over the dishwasher and just sweating
with all that steam, and I would go and the
(35:39):
someone asked me to go to the walk in to
get something, and I would always take twice as longm
just so I could be there in the coolness and
watch Randy put his foot in the projects.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Stew Man. That is so gross, dude, Like I could
throw up now if I really stopped and thought about
it for a while. No, I think we need a.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Break, all right, let's take a break.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
So Chuck's Swatch watches weren't the only things that Swatch made.
If you were alive in the eighties, almost anything that
Swatch made in the first five years was super cool.
Just landed. There was the phone Swatch, which was just
like the Jellyfish. It was a see through phone, so
you could see all the parts and they used very
colorful parts. Yeah, to make the phone one of the
(36:39):
cooler phones of all time. There was that Maxi swatch,
the wall clock that I was talking about totally, there was.
This was one of my favorites. I can still almost
smell one of them, the Granita de Fruda line, the
Italian ice line.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
It smelled right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
The pink one was raspberry, and that's the one I
can remember smelling. The yellow one smelled like banana. The
green ones smelled like mint.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
How long though, like after being that rubber band on
your sweaty wrist in the summertime. What did that things
smell like after a month?
Speaker 2 (37:11):
I mean, not good, But when you first got it,
it was amazing. I can remember that smell, and I
can remember the smell of Strawberry Shortcake. Do you remember
how she smelled?
Speaker 3 (37:20):
No, I didn't play with Strawberry Shortcake.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
For my money, one of the best smelling dolls of
all time. Okay, but so anyway, not everything that Swatch
put out, especially after the first few years, was a hit.
There were some flops. There were some middle of the
road ones, and then there were some others that were
like it's pretty good.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
Yeah, And this is mainly through the nineties. They tried
to branch into, you know, like the cell phone market
and stuff like that, when that became a thing. I
think ninety three was when they teamed up with Nokia
to make a Swatch looking cell phone. So you know,
that didn't sell so great. They had some other ideas
(38:03):
that kind of came and went again not selling so great.
None of these were like bona fide hits, right.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
The twin phone from nineteen eighty nine was it was
like Memphis design and like the they had a handset,
and then the base also doubled as a second handset,
so yeah, the frame could talk on the phone other
people at the same time. Yeah, and it looked cool too.
But then there was stuff like the Swatch Beat, which
was from nineteen ninety eight, where they essentially tried to
(38:31):
recreate how we track time by dividing the day up
into one thousand beats. So zero zero zero beats was midnight,
nine nine nine beats was eleven to fifty nine PM,
and each beat was eighty six point four seconds, And
everybody said, Swatch, Yeah, we've been using sixty seconds for
(38:52):
a really long time, and we're all pretty comfortable with it.
We're just gonna stick with that.
Speaker 3 (38:57):
Yeah, exactly, make your swatches and make them like we
love them. Although in the nineties is when they started
they started making mechanical watches again under this Swatch banner
and started making sort of higher end stuff watches with
metal cases, partnering with some of their other you know,
(39:19):
luxury brands to make you know, sort of hybrid luxury swatches.
And like you said early on, you can still you know,
get like a three hundred dollars swatch these days, it's
mechanical and metal, Yeah, which is you know, it's cool
to diverse fy a little bit, I guess, and that
those seem to be selling, okay.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Yeah, And I mean they definitely did diverse Fy. They
had a digital touch screen watch years before the Apple Watch. Like,
they really have done some innovative stuff. It's just a
lot of it hasn't caught on. But one that one
thing that they kind of branched off into that I
wasn't aware it was Swatch, but it was the smart car.
It was a collaboration with Mercedes Smart stands for Swatch
(40:02):
Mercedes Art car. Who did you know that?
Speaker 3 (40:05):
Of course not nobody knows that.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Yeah, but I thought that was pretty cool. It was
originally going to be called the Swatchmobile. It would have
never sold, but I think it would have been a
pretty cool secondary market collector's item for sure.
Speaker 3 (40:17):
Second car, the car that's right. Hey, you know what
Scott Ackerman, friend of the show. He actually I was
on Comedy Bang Bang as a guest and he told me.
I can't remember how it came up, but he told
me that factoid about this Swatch car.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Oh really, it's good for Swatch Mercedes Art Car had
no idea.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
Yeah, and I didn't know. This is before we had
covered swatches, so I didn't know at the time and
he wasn't sure. And I told them that if that, well,
we found out it was true, and I told him
that I would shout him out on the show. But yeah,
if you want to check out that episode of Comedy
Bang Bang, I was on it with Scott in the
Gang and it.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Was a lot of fun, very cool. So, like we said,
Swatch came along and they it saved the watch industry
in Switzerland so much so that all of those amazing
luxury brands like Tissow and Umiga and Long Jeans, they're
all owned by the Swatch group. That's how that's how
(41:14):
important Swatch was to the Swiss market. That it was like, yeah,
it's Swatch, We're all Swatched and that's how you can
find those brands still today. And to kind of give
you an idea of how much of a hit Swatch was.
In nineteen eighty three, they sold one point one million
swatches around the world. Three years later they were selling
(41:35):
twelve million a year. That's pretty impressive as far as
the whole thing goes.
Speaker 3 (41:41):
Yeah, if you want a dollar figure for the companies.
When they merged, they were losing one hundred and twenty
four million dollars a year. Ten years later, after this
watch comes along, they were posting profits of two hundred
and eighty six million dollars a year, and as of
last year in twenty twenty three, the Swatch Group is
(42:02):
reporting profits of more than a billion dollars, which is amazing.
What a success story. I think they're selling like close
to six million actual swatches a year still.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
Still yeah, And I mean part of that is because
they release so many there's so many swatches and people
just love them and they're cheap enough. But I mean
that's still impressive. However you slice it, it's incredible. There's
one other fact that I love that I wanted to
throw in, so because those parts were sealed into the
case when the case was built or injected, you couldn't
(42:34):
repair a swatch. I think you still can't. An original
plastic swatch, you couldn't repair it. And when Swatch first
came out, everybody was up in arms about that. So
Swatch conducted a study to figure out how long a
swatch would last, and they came up with thirty years
so if you're exactly if your forty dollars watch is
going to last you thirty years, you can shut your
(42:55):
mouth about whether you can repair it or not. I
think that was in their official press statement.
Speaker 3 (42:59):
That's right, you shut your mouth.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
You got anything else?
Speaker 3 (43:02):
I got nothing else. This is a fun little trip
down memory lane. I can't wait for my swatch to
get here. I will post that on at Chuck the Podcaster,
and I'll throw it up on this stuff. You should
know Instagram as well.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
Very nice And since Chuck mentioned that he is at
Chuck the Podcast on Instagram, that means it's time for
a listener mail.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
Would you post the his and hers?
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Sure? Yeah, Well, now that I've talked about it, I
feel bad, I'm going to start trying to wear it again.
Speaker 3 (43:32):
See what happens. Yeah, you know what, in lou of
listener Mail this week, we're gonna do something we haven't
done in a long long time. We are here in
your seventeen still trying to grow this show. Everybody. So
this is a special call to go and rate and
review us on iTunes or anywhere that you can rate
and review stuff. You should know that stuff really helps
(43:52):
us and kind of like the old day's like tell
tell your friends and family and coworkers like how much
you enjoy the show if you do, and that helps
us out. We're still looking to grow this show after
all these years, and the way we did it from
day one was very much organically through word of mouth.
So we're asking you again for a nudge.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Yeah, thanks in advance for any nudge you can give us.
Everybody in the meantime before you give us a nudge,
or while you're giving us a nudge at any point,
if you want to get in touch with us and
say hi or whatever you or send us photos of
your swatches, that's great. You can send it off to
stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're just getting totally
tubular here on Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
You joke about the eighties, my friend, but swatches are
still very, very popular.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
I never joke about the eighties. I'm quite serious about
the eighties.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
That's right, we're talking about swatches. If you don't know
what a swatch is, you may not be into watches.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Or fun.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
You may not be a gen xer. Although, like I said,
they're still around. I have recently gotten into watches for
the first time in my life. Really, Like I tried
to wear a watch. I remember when I was in
like seventh grade, and because I thought it kind of
looked cool. That was probably during the fake glasses period. Okay,
(00:59):
is it a fake No, it was a real watch,
but it never really took. And I've always kind of
said that I don't want things on my wrist. But
I got a watch. I got a couple of watches
about four months ago. I started just researching watches and
how they're made, and I was really just knocked out
(01:19):
by the craftsmanship, and so I got a couple of watches,
and I the other reason was partially so I could
look for the time and date without picking up my phone,
because I feel like that then keeps me on the phone.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
That's a great, great idea.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Yeah, so it really works, and I love my watch
a lot. And today I bought this swatch.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Oh cool, which which kind is it a newer kind?
Is it vintage? Is it?
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Well, it's it's newer, but you know, they they a
lot of the styles look like they did back then.
It's it's gonna be a good, like kind of fun
summer watch. It's not too wacky, but it's blue and
yellow and kind of has a big face. And it's
one hundred and twenty bucks, which is not nothing but
a quality watch for you know, a little over one
(02:09):
hundred dollars is a really good deal. These days, watches
are super expensive.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Yeah, it really is. And that's one thing about swatches
is they've kept their prices down all these years.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
It's about the same with inflation.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yeah, yeah, and you could get swatches that are definitely
what they sold them for back in the eighties adjusted
for inflation. They also have some that are like a
little more expensive, and then I think the most expensive one.
Dave helped us with this. He turned up when that
was like just over three hundred dollars. And they do
have some like collaborations with some higher end watch companies
(02:43):
that are more expensive than that. But if you just
get a Swatch Swatch, the most you're going to spend
is about three hundred bucks. So yeah, yeah, so you
me and I when we went on our honeymoon, we
were walking around the mall as you do on your
honeymoon in Juai, and we just popped in a Swatch
store and we got like his in her the I
(03:05):
guess the jellyfish like she got pink and I got
blue watches. Even that's the clear one, right yeah, even Yeah,
a watch having that level of sentimentality, I still can't
just wear. I just couldn't wear it. I can't have
something on my wrist right. But over the years we
still kind of collected some swatches here there, and now
(03:28):
our collection Chuck includes one of those giant Swatch wall
clocks in a region one of and it's one of
the coolest things we own.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Yeah. I had one of those, but it was a
knockoff of course it was a switch because you and
I very famously were not allowed basically any brand name,
right because we couldn't afford it. So I had I
had a knockoff whatever, like the Kmart version of that
was hanging hanging on my wall.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
That's awesome. What did it look like?
Speaker 3 (03:59):
It looked like a watch, you know, that's what yours
looks like, right, Like it's got the big band and everything,
and you just it's like hanging a big watch.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah, it's ours. Is So they built like actual seven
foot tall with the band stretched out wall clocks called
the Maxi that were like giant versions of the actual
kinds of swatches you could buy on your wrist, right,
And the one we have is called I think the
White Memphis Style and it's from like nineteen eighty four,
(04:26):
I think something like that. And then we went and
got the actual watch to match.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Did you frame it next to it?
Speaker 2 (04:33):
No, we just have it somewhere, so we pick it
up and look at it once in a while we're like, wow,
it really looks a lot like our wall clock.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Well, I just got to say, I'm not going to
try and talk you in anything, but as someone who
also did not light something on the wrist. I really
have gotten used to it, and it's to the point
now where it feels a little weird when I don't
have it on. That was fast, Yeah, and it's it's
a good, you know, good looking watch. It's kind of
nice to be like an adult and have a an
(05:00):
actual watch and not an Apple watch or something.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Right. So, one other thing about swatches that drove me crazy.
There's a distinct ticking sound that I couldn't not hear,
and I came to find that it was actually, I guess,
kind of a trait of swatches. I saw that from
researching this that swatches make a ticking sound and it's
(05:25):
because of the design, the very unique design they have,
which it will we'll get to that eventually, and when
we do, it's going to be eye popping.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Do you just keep waiting for sixty minutes to come
on TV?
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Yeah? I do, and then I just bury my head
under pillows till it's over all. Right.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Should we get into this thing, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Let's because what's interesting to me, Chuck, is that swatches
were born out of a mega crisis in Switzerland in
the beginning of the seventies.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Yes, absolutely, everyone, Well, maybe not everyone. If you've never
don't know anything about watches, you may not know that
Switzerland is renowned for their watches. If you've ever heard
the term runs like a Swiss watch, that's not because
they're kreddy and that they're they break down and that
they don't keep good time. It's because they have long
(06:12):
been a country that just has amazing craftsmanship with not
only you know, putting watches together, but manufacturing the tiny
little parts and everything. That's you know, if you've heard
of Rolex and Cardier and Omega, like all these really
nice watch brands, they're coming out of Switzerland and they
always have been.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah, and one of the reasons why they're so ridiculously
high priced is that craftsmanship. Yeah, And that's just how
it was. Like, if you wanted a nice watch, you
bought a Swiss watch, and you paid through the nose
for it. And that's that was life until the Japanese
came along, Yes, and they said, we've got it. We
have an idea here. The Japanese are famous, chuck famous
(06:54):
for improving upon other people's inventions, just taking them and
making them just amazing. And this is a really good
example of that. Seiko introduced a watch called the Astron
on Christmas Day in nineteen sixty nine, and it completely
shook the watch world because the Astron was the world's
first courts watch and that that just changed the whole
(07:16):
the whole game, because you can make a court's watch
for very cheap and they keep much better time than
a traditional movement.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Yeah, I mean it's interesting. They're they're cheaper, they last longer.
I guess there isn't the you know, the the fame
that attaches itself to, you know, a Swiss watch that's
made from all tiny little parts. But you can't argue
with quartz as a as an improvement. I'm hesitant to
(07:46):
almost say it's like clearly better, because you know, a
great mechanical watch is still a wonder to behold and
keeps really good time. But courts came along and it
was very disruptive to the industry. We talked a little
bit about court What.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Was that in it was semirismic clocks.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
I felt even more recent than that, though, now, no, that.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Was pretty recently. It was only a few months ago,
was and that nuts?
Speaker 3 (08:10):
Yeah, it seems like a few years and in the
best way possible, by the way. But quartz oscillates at
thirty two thousand, seven hundred and sixty eight times per second.
And when you have quartz as a part of your watch,
well not circuitry, but just as a part of it circuitry,
oh is it okay? Great? Then you can cut back
(08:34):
on a lot of those other little tiny parts and
you can make a thinner watch, like beyond the fact
that it just runs better and lasts longer. They can
be smaller and you don't have as many tiny little
parts that eventually could maybe break.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
No, because in a traditional mechanical watch, when you wind it,
you're tensing. You're adding tension to a spring, and then
that spring slowly unwinds and it drives all these gears
and everything, and that's how it keeps track of the time.
And that's why if you look at a traditional mechanical watch,
the second hand that keeps track of the seconds goes
in a sweeping motion, an unbroken sweeping motion all around
(09:07):
the face. A courtz watch just ticks off one second
at a time. The second hand moves every second, and
the reason why is because that circuitry has counted thirty two,
seven hundred and sixty eight pulses and now it's time
to advance one second. So that's a huge difference. But yeah,
just the like you were saying, like, yes, courts is
(09:29):
obviously better, but in the way that like an advancement
tech in technology is better, that doesn't mean that the
craftsmanship that's competing with is any worse. And in some
ways it makes that craftsmanship, you know, that much more
desirable down the road.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Yeah, for sure. But these courtz watches came in from
Japan in the nineteen seventies after the debut in sixty
nine that you mentioned. Well, I guess that was Christmas
sixty nine, so.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
The Summer of Love, the Christmas of Love.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Just a handful of days before the seventies, I think
right before Oh no, I guess that was seventies into
the eighties and Bookie.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Nights, Yeah that was that was like mid to late seventies.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Yeah. Well, but that famous New Year's Eve scene when
oh yeah that's his name. You know, man, what a
bum Yeah, that's a big bummer. Anyway, courts watches come along,
they really disrupt the industry, and all of a sudden,
Switzerland found itself in a sort of a watch crisis.
Before this broke out before courts came along, they controlled
(10:31):
fifty percent of the whole watch market in the world.
And then by nineteen seventy seven, a mere seven years
after the debut of these Japanese courts watches, Seiko became
the largest watchmaker by revenue in the world, and Switzerland
saw their industry fall off from believe between seventy seven
(10:52):
and eighty three, from forty three percent to less than
fifteen percent, which is like a real, real financial crisis.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Yet it's you don't even have to know what a
number is to know that that's a massive financial crisis, right, Yeah,
And this is not just a couple of companies, This
is the entire Swiss watchmaking industry, which was a huge
part of the Swiss economy for centuries, right, So it
was a really it was a national crisis in Switzerland.
And so these companies that make up the Swiss Swiss
(11:21):
watch making industry were just dropping like flies. And it
came down to a couple like really major companies that
own brands like Omiga and Long Jeans and Tissou, like
just really high end Swiss watch brands. The two companies
were Alamine Switzirich Urin Industry Agre, my apologies to our
(11:45):
German listeners who we know were out there. And then
the other one is the Societa Swissport Industry or leger SA,
and I said that with a weird Spanish accent, but
that's in French. And these two companies were like mega
companies and they were like golias failing falling over. Essentially
(12:06):
they were in midfall.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Yeah, in mid free fall. And so what usually would
happen in a case like this with these big corporations
as you would take the assets that each company has,
like you know, these individual brands that they own, sell
them off, hopefully make some money doing that, and then
that's basically it. But a guy named Nicholas and this
(12:28):
is just I love this kind of story when someone
comes along and just says, no, we're not doing that.
And that was the case with Nicholas G. Hyak, who
if you ask people in Switzerland, in fact, there was
an actual survey like who were the best the best
with people of all time and they said Albert Einstein,
(12:49):
Henri Dunant, who created the red Cross in the Geneva convention,
and then Nicholas Hyak, who put his foot down and
said no, we're not selling these things off. We're going
to merge together these two big companies and we're going
to start making courts watches.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Yeah. He was the head of a marketing consulting firm,
essentially business consulting firm, and they were like, just come
in and figure out the best way to sell these
companies off for parts to the highest bidder, and like
you said, he said, no, I've got a much better idea.
And it wasn't like they were just like, oh, okay,
go do that. We don't care. We're eating metzger roach
(13:28):
tie over here, so who cares. They were very much
involved in this, and he had to convince the entire
Swiss watchmaking industry yeah, and all the Swiss banks that
were backing the industry and that would eventually back this merger, like, guys,
we need to merge these two companies, like Chuck will
eventually say on this podcast called Stuff you Should Know
(13:48):
years from now, and we need to make our we
need to like start making money handover fist really quick,
and we're not going to do that with these luxury brands.
We need to figure out how to make a very cheap,
very Swiss watch and get it to market asap.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Yeah, but that's the key there that you mentioned, Like
they weren't saying, hey, let's get parts from Japan and
just kind of build from there. They were like, we're
going to make these things in Switzerland. We're going to
put our Swiss you know, our country's name behind these
basically which had so much pride in their you know,
watch craftsmanship, and we're going to make them all here
(14:26):
and that's going to be the difference. And he did
not invent or design the Swatch. He came up with
this idea for this merger. There had been prototypes of
this Swatch a couple of years before, I think nineteen
eighty one, two full years before this merger. There was
one called the Popularis, which was a courts watch. It's,
you know, not my style is very of the time
(14:49):
in eighty one, but it's it was thin and kind
of groovy looking, don't you think?
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Sure? Yeah, And that was it.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
That was the first one, but it was not a Swatch.
When Hyatt took over in eighty three, he was like,
we got to make these low en watches, and we
got to start making them like stylish. We want someone
to be able to go out and buy a cheap watch,
maybe who's never owned a watch before, because they were expensive.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
M Luckily, he had some really good employees under his
well employee in these two merged companies. One of them
was a guy named Ernest tom Key. He's considered one
of the other fathers of Swatch. He had a couple
of designers, Jacques Muller and Elmar Mack working under him,
and between these three together you had some amazing designers
(15:37):
but also just really smart watch engineers. And tom Ky
in particular had been working for a good decade or
so trying to make the world's thinnest watch. Yeah, and
eventually he did. It was a watch called the Delirium.
It was less than two millimeters thick, that's five sixty
fourths of an inch thick, a watch with all of
(15:59):
the movie mints. And it wasn't a mechanical watch. It
was quartz, but it was still super duper thin even
for a quartz watch. And in fact, if you watch
Scarface Tony Montana's wearing one of these, it was just
a big, big deal. It was a very expensive watch
just because it was so thin, and also it was Swiss,
so if you put these guys who are really good
at designing and really good at engineering with fewer and
(16:20):
fewer parts in smaller and smaller spaces together, you've got
the basis for creating a brand new kind of watch
that Switzerland had never produced before, which is cheap, Swiss
and innovative and stylish.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Yeah, it's funny. It was very of the time, like thin, thin,
thin watches was a big thing back then. I kind
of even remember that. Yeah, I feel like and you know,
I've done a little bit of research since I've gotten
into watches a little bit, but it seems like seems
like chunky watches are kind of the thing now and
that very sort of thin even maybe rectangular bezel kind
(16:57):
of watch is and the bezel is just the you know,
the glass piece that sits over the top of everything
to protect it.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
You have been doing your research, Well.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
There's only a handful of watch parts and you got
to know what they are. Okay, but that doesn't seem
to be very in as in style anymore. But they
would get those parts down, you know, even for a
courtz watch. I think a typical courts watch had about
ninety one parts. They got that down all the way
to fifty one. They called it within the company Revolution
(17:26):
fifty one, and it was it was a big deal.
Like it was. I mean, they're still around and still
a huge company for all these reasons.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Yeah, And okay, so that's going on. You've got Tom
Key creating watches with fewer and fewer parts. At the
same time, Elmar Mack he had this dream to start
using plastic injection molding, yeah, to make watches. And rather
than get approval to buy a plastic injection molding machine,
which was like half a million marks I think at
(17:57):
the time, he dis ordered it. And so luckily they
had this plastic injection molding machine and they used it
to create the first watches, and that helped them reduce
the number of movements even more because a lot of
the movement parts are what mount the actual moving parts
to the watch. And what they did was they built
(18:20):
in all of those parts that mount the movement to
the watch into the case itself, so it was all
one solid part and that even further dropped the number
of moving parts needed that much more in the original
swatches that came out.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Look at you, you said, case, what did that's a
watch part?
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Oh? Thanks? I thought I'd been saying, like, Kasi this
whole time, You're finally You're like, you finally got it, Jos.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
All right, shall we take a break. Yeah, all right,
let's take our first break here and we come back.
We'll talk a little bit more about the early days
of this swatch. Okay, so we're back with Swatches. Switzerland
(19:16):
has this great idea, but they had a little bit
of a just sort of an early challenge on their hands.
You know. They found how to reduce the parts and
make everything cheaper, which was great, but they eventually looked
around their factory and said, here's the deal. We want
to make these all here, but everyone here makes a
ton of money. Like Switzerland just for regular old jobs
(19:38):
has the highest, you know, some of the highest wages
in the world, at least it has for a long time.
So you know, they could have outsourced. They could have
gotten some parts from different you know, countries in the
world and have them brought in and maybe just assembled
in Switzerland. But they held firm and they said, no,
we're not going to do it. We need to just
innovate and get manufacturing technologies that are so advanced that
(20:03):
we can get these things down to like, you know,
thirty to fifty bucks and they were able to do it.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Yeah, that's one of the reasons why Hayek or Hyak
is so revered. Not only did he challenge the watchmakers
in Switzerland to make a cheap Swiss Swiss watch, he
also was like, now you have to redesign how we
make watches from the ground up. And they were successful
and they ended up coming up with the Swatch. And
(20:31):
as much as that is a like the innovation to
the whole thing is impressive, the marketing piece to swatches was.
I mean it was just as just as much a
part of Swatch is this new way of making watches
because Hyak was he saw watches a little differently. He
was an outsider, and up to that point, if you
(20:53):
made watches, you considered watches jewelry, high end jewelry essentially. Yeah,
and he was like, no, this is you're overthinking watches,
or at least you're overthinking this watch that we're making.
These are not jewelry. We're gonna make them fashion statements,
like fashion items. And just like say ties or shoes,
and you have more than one tie, and you have
(21:14):
more than one pair of shoes. We're gonna make it
so these people who are buying our watches want more
than one watch. It's gonna be amazing guys.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Yeah, and they went in. I mean it was a
huge risk, but you know, he painted a picture of like,
imagine a world where teenagers want four and five of
these and all of a sudden they're you know, over
the course of a few years, they're investing you know,
two or three hundred dollars in their watch collection. And
(21:44):
that's a good start, and you know, it could be
a second watch for people. And that was in fact,
if you've always thought this watch was Swiss plus Watch,
you're probably right. But other people, including Hayek, have said
it was actually a mashup of Second Watch. But you know,
they had a marketing people that came in. There was
(22:05):
a guy, a consultant named Franz Schprecher. He supposedly coined
the name Swatch, and he officially said, no, it was
Swiss plus Watch. Other people in the company did say
second Watch. So either way you get Swatch. My money
is on officially probably Swiss Watch me too.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
That's what I'm going with.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
But who cares. It's a Swatch.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Yeah, And The first twelve Swatches came out in nineteen
eighty three March. First they debuted in Switzerland, Germany and
the UK. And if you go look back at the
original twelve Swatches, you'd be like, those are swatches. You
can tell it's got some swatch quality to it, but
it just is so boring and stayed in middle of
(22:50):
the road as far as its design goes. And it
turns out that was a deliberate decision because as they
were about to go to market with these things, apparently everybody,
including Hyatt, got cold feet and was like, what happens
if Yeah, so they decided to go with the colors
that the Swiss Army uses in their uniforms. So if
(23:15):
it was a flop, they could turn around to the
Swiss Army and be like, why don't you buy all
these surplus watches? Can at least try to break even here?
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Yeah? Liked you? Guys said great with your knives, so
imagine what you could do with a watch.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Yeah. Have you seen Swiss Army Man?
Speaker 3 (23:31):
Yes? I have?
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Okay, got you? Yes?
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Did you like it?
Speaker 2 (23:36):
I did in a lot of ways. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Yeah, it's a crazy movie. The directors of everything everywhere
all at once.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Right, Oh, that makes sense. I didn't know that. That
definitely makes sense now.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
Yeah, yeah, they were always sort of on the outside
there with those wacky ideas.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Yeah for sure.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
All right, So they were selling these first ones for
about fifty pounds in the UK, those twelve watches sold
even though they were people had no idea what they
were in for with this watch based on these twelve,
but they still loved them. They sold very well. Summer
of eighty three comes along and they had another brilliant
you know, one of the most brilliant marketing marketed companies
(24:17):
of all time probably was its Swatch. But they said, hey,
I don't even think people are saying the term drops yet.
Maybe they were. I'm kind of curious when that started.
A shoe drop or a jersey drop or something, or
a hat drop. But they had a Swatch drop called
the jellyfish. My brother had one of these, and I
(24:39):
was texting him yesterday and I was like, did you
have the original nineteen eighty three jellyfish that was the
clear one? And he said he sold it a little
while ago for a little bit of money, and he said,
I don't think it was one of the first years
and he said, why is that a big deal? Or
he didn't know it was the first year. He said,
why was the eighty three a big deal? It's like, well,
that was the first one, if I remember. He got
(25:01):
it a couple of years later, and you can still
they still make like versions of the Jellyfish now. But
it took off once the Jellyfish hit and the idea
of these drops, these special releases. They would release collections
in the fall in the spring, and then one off
specials once a year and they were huge.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Yeah. I think they even did seasonal specials, so a
few times a year. But the fact that these were
just you know, they'd come and go pretty quickly, like
they'd make a limited amount, it would sell out really quickly.
People started collecting swatches. There was a I can't remember
deliberate scarcity, I guess yeah, created by the seasonal one offs, right,
(25:44):
and that helped propel swatch like from watchmaker to this
is exactly what Hayek was going for. These are fashion items,
they're fashion statements. They're desirable things that people can buy
multiple ones of and show you know who they are
inside by wearing something on the outside.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
Essentially, Yeah, ironically, maybe wearing a swatch with your muscle
shirt of the Japanese flag because those were big.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Don't forget the headband, the matching headband.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
I had to have the matching headband. We played an
eighties set our bandit at the porch Fest in our
neighborhood a few years ago, and I wore like an
MTV shirt and these like Neon glasses and stuff, and
I had the headband. I was like, geez, is that
even something you can do these days? Like wear a
headband of a Japanese flag. Certain, I'm not even sure
if I feel good about it, but I didn't do
(26:37):
it in the end.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Okay, yeah, that's probably good because you know those hipsters
will throw beer bottles at you on stage, like the
Blues Brothers.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
Yeah, well but we have a a chicken wire protecting us,
so it's fine.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Luckily. I mean, you got to if you're going to
wear a Japanese headband in twenty twenty three. Yeah, let's
see where were we?
Speaker 3 (26:55):
Well, I guess we can go to eighty five, because
that's when that's when things really change, right.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Yeah, So I guess the whole thing was kind of
like you said, they started they sold pretty well initially,
and then when they started to add the one offs
like that, that became like a really big deal. But
nineteen eighty five was when Swatch expanded even further out,
and actually I think eighty four, yeah, is when they
started to expand they were kind of they like the
(27:24):
Red Bull model of like, oh, that's a crazy sport,
let's let's sponsor that. Swatch looked around as like this
is super cool and the kids are into this, let's
sponsor this or that or this, And what they came
up with first was the Swatchwatch New York City fresh Fest,
which is considered the first hip hop concert tour ever.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Yeah, it was Houdini and Curtis Blow and Run, DMC
fat Boys I saw. I think they did it for
a few years because it saw where like the Beastie
Boys opened up. But yeah, that had to have been
like that maybe second or third year. But it was
a big deal and they were on the leading edge
of kind of everything that was cool in the early
to mid eighties. So of course what you're gonna have
(28:06):
is people trying to get in on that. And they
had like the cheap, cheap knockoffs, like literally some of
them were named Watch, Mwatch and things like that. But
like legitimate brands like Guest Genes, Guests started making watches
and some other big eighties brands started getting in there
on the watch scene, like clearly ripping off swatches.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Yeah, one brand was Armitron's watch. Yeah, I don't know
what that is, but I went back and looked at him,
and I was like, these are actually kind of cool.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
They were, They were all cool.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
They actually pushed the envelope a little further, Like Swatch
came along and like laid the groundwork for other people
to go even more crazy with their watches, and Armitron
was one of them. And so there's nothing wrong with
some friendly competition. Swatch had no problems with that. What
Swatch had a problem with was the counterfeit that were
flooding the market. Yeah, about as fast as genuine swatches
(29:05):
were selling.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Yeah, watches seem to be one of the most counterfeited
sort of high end items, and I guess in this
case not as high end, but you know, fake Rolex's.
There's always been a market for counterfeit watches, and watches
was no different. They were selling eleven thousand legitimate watches
a day a day in nineteen eighty four, and they
(29:27):
estimated that ten thousand fakes were being imported every day.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Man, that's crazy. Yeah, you said that. They were kind
of trying to get their fingers into every cool thing
that was emerging at the time. Another thing I saw
was that they sponsored the Impact skateboarding tour, Oh yeah,
starting in nineteen eighty eight. That was a big one too.
And then also one of the other things Swatch became
really famous for was collaborating with artists like the hottest
(29:54):
artists of the day. And the big one, the one
that really kind of put it all over the top,
was one the early ones. In nineteen eighty six, they
had Keith Haring designed four different watches, and they are today,
I think, the most coveted swatches like ever by collectors.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Yeah for sure. I mean they're cool looking, it's Keith
Haring and it's on a watch base, So what more
do you need to know? They went to Andy Warhol
first and he said, no, I don't have time for this,
he said, but you should get this guy, Keith Haring.
I think if you have an entire like primo collection
of those four you can get, you know, up to
(30:33):
one hundred grand for those four watches at auction.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Yeah. And the way that you tell their primo is
you take your pinky and you dab it on the
watch bezel, Yeah, and stick it to your tongue or
maybe your gum, and you're like, yeah, it's a primo
watch Man.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
This is pure, pure bezel.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
So they also, aside from hering, they collaborate with a
bunch of other artists. Yoko Ono, Yeah, delivered one or
a bunch of butts naked bottoms. That's a super yoko
on a thing to do. Pigicasso, the pig that paints.
I can't believe that they didn't clean up the art
that they used from him. It's just too it's too appealing.
(31:15):
It's not there's no mess ups in it, you know
what I mean? Yeah, I just I think they may
have done that. And then Alfred Hope hoof Kunst, hoof Kunst.
What would you say, mister Laffey.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Uh, Alfred, I would probably say a half kunst.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
I'm pretty sure I said that in one of the
five times I tried it.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
I'm sure you did well.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Anyway, he had another legendary release in nineteen ninety one,
he designed three swatches that were basically food. It looked
like food. One is bacon and eggs, one's a disturbing
looking cucumber, puffy cucumber, and otherre's a tomato. And then
the big marketing thing that came up with for this
is that in Europe you bought them in the grocery
(32:01):
aisles of a supermarket. That's where you could get those swatches,
which is kind of cool.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
Yeah, I feel like you could get swatches in a
lot of different places, like maybe if you lived in
a big enough city you had an actual swatch store,
But didn't they just sell them at like, you know,
the poster headshops and places like that too.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Yeah, that was another thing too. You could also get
them at like department stores, Like you could get them
all over the place, right, Yeah, and they figured that out,
I read after they tried the traditional route, which is
sending them to jewelry stores, and in the US they
did not catch on immediately because they're the main stores
(32:41):
that they tried to sell swatches through to the United
States first were jewelry stores in San Antonio, Texas. Yeah,
and they didn't sell very well. They went back to
the drawing board, They're like, let's try this a different way,
and then they started to sell them all over the place,
and then they took off very quickly in the US
after that, and they're like, Middle America doesn't want these,
so we're going to go to the coasts. And the
(33:03):
coasts supported Swatch for a very long time until they
caught on. In the Midwest.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
They couldn't even sell there. There's no basement in the
Alamos watch there, it's right, So you know that was trouble.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Mm hmm. I lived in the Midwest. I grew up
in the Midwest, and I don't think I got my
first watch until nineteen eighty six. Probably.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
You know, my first Swatch is coming in the mail
in the next week. I've never owned one.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Yeah, I can't wait to see that one when it arrives.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Yeah. Part of it was it, like I said, I
didn't wear watches back then, But I don't know. I
think the other thing is just like, I mean, you're
lucky you got one because you kind of grew up
how I did, which was like, hey, if it's cool
and cost money, you're not getting it.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah. No, for sure, I did too. I wore Knights
of the round table shirts see more than once.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
But good for you got that swatch.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
You know. I worked myself to the bone. Yeah, cuttlawns,
were walking the dog, cutting lawns, taking out the trash.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
So you bought it yourself then, it wasn't like a
Christmas gift.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
No, I my parents still got it for me.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
It didn't make that much money, but I think it's
still it were only like thirty or forty dollars.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
But yeah, back then that was a lot of dough.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Though it was, but it was still most people with
a job could afford us watch no problem. Essentially. I
was just ten, you know.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
Yeah, I was too busy spending you know, eight dollars
to go to concerts and arenas when I was twelve
years old for my bus boy wages.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
That's awesome. I wait, twelve, You started working at twelve, Josh.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
I was a busboy at a barbecue restaurant when I
was twelve years old.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
No, I know. That's where the guy put his foot
in the Brunswick stew. That's legendary. Butwell I never caught
on that it was twelve.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
It was twelve. It was totally illegal and under the table.
Uh yeah, and it's what's so funny, as I'm trying
to imagine everyone who doesn't know that Brunswicks two story
wondering what in the world you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
You can go listen to Restaurant Health Inspections. Is the
story where that dates?
Speaker 3 (34:59):
Oh okay, yeah, and it's popped up weirdly several times.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Well, it's kind of an important story.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
It's funny. It just came up last night. We were
watching an episode of The Bear, which, by the way,
I don't like this new season. I'm not sure if
you're into it or not.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
I couldn't get into I watched the first episode or two,
and I just it wasn't for.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
Me, the whole show or the new season. The whole
show okay, yeah, first two seasons good, I'm not liking
this one anyway. There was a scene in the walk
in cooler where the guy's just sitting in there, and
I was like, oh God, I used to love the
walk in cooler because it always gets so hot and
I would be working over the dishwasher and just sweating
with all that steam, and I would go and the
(35:39):
someone asked me to go to the walk in to
get something, and I would always take twice as longm
just so I could be there in the coolness and
watch Randy put his foot in the projects.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Stew Man. That is so gross, dude, Like I could
throw up now if I really stopped and thought about
it for a while. No, I think we need a.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Break, all right, let's take a break.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
So Chuck's Swatch watches weren't the only things that Swatch made.
If you were alive in the eighties, almost anything that
Swatch made in the first five years was super cool.
Just landed. There was the phone Swatch, which was just
like the Jellyfish. It was a see through phone, so
you could see all the parts and they used very
colorful parts. Yeah, to make the phone one of the
(36:39):
cooler phones of all time. There was that Maxi swatch,
the wall clock that I was talking about totally, there was.
This was one of my favorites. I can still almost
smell one of them, the Granita de Fruda line, the
Italian ice line.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
It smelled right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
The pink one was raspberry, and that's the one I
can remember smelling. The yellow one smelled like banana. The
green ones smelled like mint.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
How long though, like after being that rubber band on
your sweaty wrist in the summertime. What did that things
smell like after a month?
Speaker 2 (37:11):
I mean, not good, But when you first got it,
it was amazing. I can remember that smell, and I
can remember the smell of Strawberry Shortcake. Do you remember
how she smelled?
Speaker 3 (37:20):
No, I didn't play with Strawberry Shortcake.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
For my money, one of the best smelling dolls of
all time. Okay, but so anyway, not everything that Swatch
put out, especially after the first few years, was a hit.
There were some flops. There were some middle of the
road ones, and then there were some others that were
like it's pretty good.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
Yeah, And this is mainly through the nineties. They tried
to branch into, you know, like the cell phone market
and stuff like that, when that became a thing. I
think ninety three was when they teamed up with Nokia
to make a Swatch looking cell phone. So you know,
that didn't sell so great. They had some other ideas
(38:03):
that kind of came and went again not selling so great.
None of these were like bona fide hits, right.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
The twin phone from nineteen eighty nine was it was
like Memphis design and like the they had a handset,
and then the base also doubled as a second handset,
so yeah, the frame could talk on the phone other
people at the same time. Yeah, and it looked cool too.
But then there was stuff like the Swatch Beat, which
was from nineteen ninety eight, where they essentially tried to
(38:31):
recreate how we track time by dividing the day up
into one thousand beats. So zero zero zero beats was midnight,
nine nine nine beats was eleven to fifty nine PM,
and each beat was eighty six point four seconds, And
everybody said, Swatch, Yeah, we've been using sixty seconds for
(38:52):
a really long time, and we're all pretty comfortable with it.
We're just gonna stick with that.
Speaker 3 (38:57):
Yeah, exactly, make your swatches and make them like we
love them. Although in the nineties is when they started
they started making mechanical watches again under this Swatch banner
and started making sort of higher end stuff watches with
metal cases, partnering with some of their other you know,
(39:19):
luxury brands to make you know, sort of hybrid luxury swatches.
And like you said early on, you can still you know,
get like a three hundred dollars swatch these days, it's
mechanical and metal, Yeah, which is you know, it's cool
to diverse fy a little bit, I guess, and that
those seem to be selling, okay.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Yeah, And I mean they definitely did diverse Fy. They
had a digital touch screen watch years before the Apple Watch. Like,
they really have done some innovative stuff. It's just a
lot of it hasn't caught on. But one that one
thing that they kind of branched off into that I
wasn't aware it was Swatch, but it was the smart car.
It was a collaboration with Mercedes Smart stands for Swatch
(40:02):
Mercedes Art car. Who did you know that?
Speaker 3 (40:05):
Of course not nobody knows that.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Yeah, but I thought that was pretty cool. It was
originally going to be called the Swatchmobile. It would have
never sold, but I think it would have been a
pretty cool secondary market collector's item for sure.
Speaker 3 (40:17):
Second car, the car that's right. Hey, you know what
Scott Ackerman, friend of the show. He actually I was
on Comedy Bang Bang as a guest and he told me.
I can't remember how it came up, but he told
me that factoid about this Swatch car.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Oh really, it's good for Swatch Mercedes Art Car had
no idea.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
Yeah, and I didn't know. This is before we had
covered swatches, so I didn't know at the time and
he wasn't sure. And I told them that if that, well,
we found out it was true, and I told him
that I would shout him out on the show. But yeah,
if you want to check out that episode of Comedy
Bang Bang, I was on it with Scott in the
Gang and it.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Was a lot of fun, very cool. So, like we said,
Swatch came along and they it saved the watch industry
in Switzerland so much so that all of those amazing
luxury brands like Tissow and Umiga and Long Jeans, they're
all owned by the Swatch group. That's how that's how
(41:14):
important Swatch was to the Swiss market. That it was like, yeah,
it's Swatch, We're all Swatched and that's how you can
find those brands still today. And to kind of give
you an idea of how much of a hit Swatch was.
In nineteen eighty three, they sold one point one million
swatches around the world. Three years later they were selling
(41:35):
twelve million a year. That's pretty impressive as far as
the whole thing goes.
Speaker 3 (41:41):
Yeah, if you want a dollar figure for the companies.
When they merged, they were losing one hundred and twenty
four million dollars a year. Ten years later, after this
watch comes along, they were posting profits of two hundred
and eighty six million dollars a year, and as of
last year in twenty twenty three, the Swatch Group is
(42:02):
reporting profits of more than a billion dollars, which is amazing.
What a success story. I think they're selling like close
to six million actual swatches a year still.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
Still yeah, And I mean part of that is because
they release so many there's so many swatches and people
just love them and they're cheap enough. But I mean
that's still impressive. However you slice it, it's incredible. There's
one other fact that I love that I wanted to
throw in, so because those parts were sealed into the
case when the case was built or injected, you couldn't
(42:34):
repair a swatch. I think you still can't. An original
plastic swatch, you couldn't repair it. And when Swatch first
came out, everybody was up in arms about that. So
Swatch conducted a study to figure out how long a
swatch would last, and they came up with thirty years
so if you're exactly if your forty dollars watch is
going to last you thirty years, you can shut your
(42:55):
mouth about whether you can repair it or not. I
think that was in their official press statement.
Speaker 3 (42:59):
That's right, you shut your mouth.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
You got anything else?
Speaker 3 (43:02):
I got nothing else. This is a fun little trip
down memory lane. I can't wait for my swatch to
get here. I will post that on at Chuck the Podcaster,
and I'll throw it up on this stuff. You should
know Instagram as well.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
Very nice And since Chuck mentioned that he is at
Chuck the Podcast on Instagram, that means it's time for
a listener mail.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
Would you post the his and hers?
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Sure? Yeah, Well, now that I've talked about it, I
feel bad, I'm going to start trying to wear it again.
Speaker 3 (43:32):
See what happens. Yeah, you know what, in lou of
listener Mail this week, we're gonna do something we haven't
done in a long long time. We are here in
your seventeen still trying to grow this show. Everybody. So
this is a special call to go and rate and
review us on iTunes or anywhere that you can rate
and review stuff. You should know that stuff really helps
(43:52):
us and kind of like the old day's like tell
tell your friends and family and coworkers like how much
you enjoy the show if you do, and that helps
us out. We're still looking to grow this show after
all these years, and the way we did it from
day one was very much organically through word of mouth.
So we're asking you again for a nudge.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Yeah, thanks in advance for any nudge you can give us.
Everybody in the meantime before you give us a nudge,
or while you're giving us a nudge at any point,
if you want to get in touch with us and
say hi or whatever you or send us photos of
your swatches, that's great. You can send it off to
stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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