80s Swatch watches

Last Updated on April 3, 2024 by Dave Farquhar

Swatch watches were a popular fad in the 1980s, a reaction against the growing popularity of digital watches. The company is still very much alive today, but Generation X will probably always associate the colorful watches with the 80s. But Swatch is more than just a retro icon. It’s also an excellent lesson in product marketing.

Swatch watches, popular in the 1980s

Swatch launched in 1983 from the remains of two bankrupt watch makers, as an attempt to popularize Swiss-made analog watches. Swiss watches have been synonymous with quality for generations, but I don’t know when the last time was I heard anyone from Generation X or younger saying something runs like a Swiss watch. It’s more like something my grandfather would say. And my grandfather may have had a Swiss watch. But my dad didn’t. He preferred Seiko watches made in Japan.

The target audience for Swatch watches wasn’t someone like my dad, and certainly not my grandfather. It was more like me. The question was, how do you sell a Swiss-made analog watch to someone between the ages of 12 and 24? That was the tough problem Swatch set out to solve. Swatch wanted to sell old-fashioned Swiss watches to a new generation in a decade where high technology was evolving at breakneck speed.

To say they succeeded is an understatement.

Swatch: The New Wave in Swiss watches

Their tagline gave hints to their strategy. Even if you weren’t familiar with the phrase New Wave, the tagline suggests these were new and different. New Wave was a genre of popular music during the 1980s, a forerunner to what we would today call alternative music. It was heavy on synthesizers and frequently had an upbeat, happy tone, but sometimes the subject matter was inappropriately dark for that upbeat tone. Its popularity was a bit of an accident, but when MTV launched intending to play music videos, their richest source of material happened to be promotional videos recorded by British New Wave bands. The genre caught on and helped define the 80s sound. Swatch watches were an example of the phrase crossing into other aspects of popular culture.

The industrial design of Swatch watches took a number of design cues from ’80s New Wave album covers, using brightly colored plastics and unconventional watch face designs to create a trippy, non-traditional look. A number of the colors also found use in 80s jam shorts, another popular 80s fad.

And it worked. Sales grew from $3 million in 1983 to $150 million by 1985. While they didn’t reach $250 million in sales in 1986 as they hoped, they consistently sold $100 million worth until 1989.

How Swatch watches were marketed

Swatch watches were inexpensive, but the company took measures to keep them from becoming too inexpensive. The watches themselves sold for $20 at first, later rising to $30. The price was within reach for the target audience, but high enough to not necessarily be an impulse buy. Keep in mind $30 in 1986 is equivalent to about $85 in 2023. Swatch also marketed special-edition watches that sold for $50.

No doubt they were making a profit at that price. The watches were plastic, and had 1/3 the parts count of a traditional quartz watch. But much of their profit came from a line of accessories.

Swatch watch accessories

Besides the watch, Swatch also sold you guards that snapped or slid onto the face of the watch to protect the clear plastic watch crystal from getting scratched. They also sold and assortment of replacement watch bands in a wide selection of styles and colors.

The cool kids would get the watch, and of course others would follow. Then, things escalated with the accessories. By the time you customized the watch band, bought the snap-on Guard Too to protect the outside of the watch face, and one of the original silicone rubber guards that slid onto the band to protect the center of the face, you’d spent nearly $20 accessorizing that $30 watch. And the really cool kids bought two of those guards and spun them together to make a thicker and more colorful guard. Or maybe you bought three and braided them. It was possible to spend more on accessories than the original cost of the watch.

And you paid retail. Swatch watches sold in department stores and mall boutiques like The Limited. When they ran a sale, typically they would bundle an accessory with the watch, rather than discounting the watch. I remember knock off guards existing, but of course if you bought a knock off, you didn’t advertise it.

As Generation X grew up, Swatch styling became less in-your-face, bucking traditional convention in increasingly more subtle ways. As the product became more niche and less of a mass market item, the company survived by making the watches in small quantities and controlling distribution. Unauthorized distributors would get their hands on some, but since they probably paid retail, a gray market Swatch watch usually sold for $159 rather than the original $50 price.

Why were Swatch watches popular?

Swatch watches were a brilliant piece of marketing, but they exploited conditions that existed in the 1980s that don’t really exist today.

The main thing was that wearing a watch was much more common in the 1980s than it is today. Watches became a lot less common when we all started carrying mobile devices. If it weren’t for smart watches that extend the usability of your mobile phone, wearing a watch would be less common than it is now.

In the 1980s, few people had mobile devices, so we wore watches to track time. Even if you had a desk job, your computer didn’t necessarily have a clock in the corner of the screen like modern computers do now.

But the target audience wasn’t necessarily people with desk jobs. The target market was ages 12 to 24, basically 8th grade through college and into the first year or two of a first post-college career.

How we wore Swatch watches in the 80s

Swatch exploited every generation’s desire to be different from the previous one. A Swatch was analog, not digital like the watch my dad wore. My grandfather wore an analog watch, and it might have been a Swiss watch at that. But it didn’t look like a Swatch.

Besides outfitting them with accessories, Generation X wore Swatch watches in unconventional ways. Sometimes it was as subtle as not cinching it down as tightly as our parents did. But some people went to the extent of wearing the watch upside down. That could mean with 12:00 facing down instead of up. Or sometimes it meant with the watch face toward the ground and the buckle facing you.

And in spite of the low price, they became a something of a status symbol. The watch itself was inexpensive. But you could tell who had more money by how much they accessorized them. And if that wasn’t enough to set you apart, you’d get additional Swatches and wear two or three of them on your wrist.

The popularity hit a wall sometime around 1988, partly because other companies saw the potential for fast-fashion, inexpensive watches and entered the market.

Swatch never really went away, but it went from having to compete with knockoff accessories to having to compete with other brands of watches like Guess and Fossil.

Are 1980s Swatch watches worth anything?

Swatch watches became collectible before the 1980s came to an end. If you find a vintage 1980s Swatch watch and it’s in good condition, there’s collector interest in it. It’s not necessarily worth what it cost new after you factor inflation, but it’s not at all uncommon for a Swatch watch to fetch $40 or more. Vintage Swatch watches frequently turn up on Ebay.

Accessories like vintage Swatch guards turn up on Ebay as well, sometimes still in original retail packaging.

How Swatch watches survived the growth-at-all-costs 1980s

So how did a company go from selling $3 million worth of watches to $150 million in four years, miss its target of selling $250 million worth of watches in 1986, tail off to $100 million, and survive? For a public company, Swatch’s 1986 might have been the end.

But Swatch’s CEO took the company private in 1985, while it was on its growth curve but before its peak. This allowed Swatch to take the long view, rather than being pressured to deliver endless year-over-year hypergrowth that probably wasn’t sustainable.

Swatch is a good example of a company that took the infinite game approach, rather than a winner-and-loser finite game approach that tends to sink many young companies.

And that infinite-game approach is how the popular 1980s Swatch watches went from being an 80s fad to surviving into the 2020s delivering steady sales and revenue. And without the outside pressure to increase profits at all costs, they even were able to continue making the watches in Switzerland the whole time, not just designing them there. As a result, the 80s Swatch watch ended up being more like the penny loafer in terms of timelessness than like tight-rolled jeans.