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