Sawt Falasteen - Swatch blames shopping centres for 'problems' with star product launch

Hundreds of people waited through the night or longer hoping to get their hands on the "Royal Pop" timepieces, billed as a "disruptive collaboration" with the luxury watchmaker Audemars Piguet.

But things turned ugly in New York and several European cities as well as in Thailand on Saturday, with fights breaking out and some security gates vandalised at some of the 220 stores offering the watches.

In France, officers fired tear gas to control a crowd of around 300 would-be buyers outside a Swatch shop near Paris, and four people reported being punched in the crowed massed outside a store in Lille, northern France.

"There were problems... because the lines were extremely long and the organisation by some shopping centres was not sufficient to handle the rush," Swatch said in a statement to AFP.

It noted similar incidents during the 2022 launch of its MoonSwatch collaboration with Omega.

"As with the MoonSwatch, things 'normalised' a bit after launch day, especially after we again communicated that the Royal Pop collection would be available for several months," it said.

Fights and police interventions were also reported at stores in Amsterdam, London and Milan, and Swatch said it had to close stores in several cities for "safety considerations".

W.AbuLaban--SF-PST