Why Was Swatch Successful?

The Birth of the Swatch

1) Why was Swatch successful? In what ways was Swatch different from any other watch the industry has ever seen?

Firstly, Swatch was different from other watch industry because the have their manufacturing process in Switzerland, where the labour cost is really expensive. To solve that problem Swatch designed a manufacturing process in which the direct labour is less than 10% of total cost.

Additionally, they made three important changes in their production techniques, reducing the number of individual parts from 92 to 51, this measure reduced costs significantly.

Another difference is the encased device, that was made in cheap plastic, this created a great controversy because the Swiss watch industry was always been knowing of using the highest quality materials.

The design was a great difference from other watch industries, they sold a product with a witty design, using brash, intense colours, which was a change that differentiate a lot from other brands because all the traditional watches were with subdued colours. The designs were numerous, four times what they were going to need for the collection, so in those elections they choose the best models, that against other companies were too much better.

Other differentiation from the traditional watch industry was that they were selling limited editions of 120 watches, that carried the same sticker prices, which doesn´t reach to high profits but creates a lot of significant publicity in media.

They were the first manufacturer of see-through watch, and also the first to introduce a scented watch.

The price was a competitive advantage from other brands, not because it was cheap, but it had the same price over ten years of production. Adding to this that the price was relatively cheap, taking into account that was a Swiss Watch.

The message of Swatch was also different because they use unorthodox promotional stunts, and they spend around 30% of the Swatch´s retail...