When Audemars Piguet’s Royal Oak became a bag charm

What happened A pocket watch priced from $400 triggered days-long queues, resale markups of six times retail or more, and scenes that looked less like a watch launch than a sneaker drop. Swatch’s collaboration with Audemars Piguet, the Royal Pop collection, released May 16, drew crowds across Shanghai, Shenzhen, Ningbo, and Hong Kong, with some consumers arriving days before doors opened. Demand overwhelmed stores far beyond China: in London, Milan, and Paris, police intervened to control crowds; in Dubai, both Mall of the Emirates and Dubai Mall locations cancelled their launches entirely; in Mumbai and New Delhi, authorities shut down openings over safety concerns. Pieces retailed at 2,950 RMB in China, where resale offers of up to 8,000 RMB ($1,177) — roughly three times the retail price — were reportedly made to buyers the moment they left stores. Globally, Bloomberg reported listings on Chrono24, the world’s largest watch resale platform, reaching as high as 5,000 euros ($5,821), around 13 times the retail price of the cheapest model. Queue-jumping services emerged in multiple markets, with consumers reportedly paying others to hold their place in line. Royal Pop follows a blueprint Swatch has refined across two previous partnerships — with Omega on the MoonSwatch and with Blancpain on the Bioceramic Scuba Fifty Fathoms: take one of watchmaking’s most recognizable names, lower the price barrier dramatically, and generate mass excitement through limited distribution and cultural spectacle. This time, however, the collaboration carries a distinction that sets it apart from its predecessors. Audemars Piguet is not a Swatch Group brand. Unlike Omega and Blancpain, both owned by Swatch Group, AP is fully independent — making Royal Pop the first time Swatch has licensed a luxury partner’s design from outside its own corporate family. Rather than producing a wristwatch, the two brands launched eight hand-wound mechanical pocket watches in bioceramic, designed to be worn on a lanyard, clipped to a bag, or displayed on a removable stand. Critics were not placated by the pocket watch format. Collectors and industry observers questioned whether placing the Royal Oak — arguably Audemars Piguet’s most valuable and recognizable asset — at a $400 entry point risks eroding the exclusivity that underpins the brand’s appeal. Celebrity collector and longtime Audemars Piguet enthusiast Edison Chen publicly voiced dissatisfaction on social media, reflecting broader concerns among collectors that Royal Oak symbolism was being pushed too far into mass culture. The debate goes beyond watches. It raises a larger question increasingly confronting luxury brands: when exclusivity becomes temporarily affordable, does accessibility expand desire — or dilute the scarcity that gives luxury its power? The Jing Take The bigger question surrounding Royal Pop is whether the attention came from the audience Audemars Piguet actually wants. Scenes outside Swatch stores looked less like traditional luxury retail and more like a sneaker drop or collectible toy release. In Paris, police fired tear gas to control crowds outside the Champs-Élysées flagship. In New York, officers intervened at Times Square and SoHo, with at least one arrest confirmed by the NYPD. In Dubai, both Mall of the Emirates and Dubai Mall locations cancelled their launches entirely. Swatch Group later acknowledged problems at around 20 of its 220 participating stores worldwide. Many of the people lining up were almost certainly not prospective Audemars Piguet customers. They were resellers and hype participants chasing secondary-market gains. When a $400 product trades within hours for 13 times its retail price on Chrono24 — and for triple that in China’s secondary market — speculation becomes the product itself. For Swatch, this behavior is familiar territory. For Audemars Piguet, it is considerably more complicated. Luxury watchmaking has traditionally operated on an “if you know, you know” logic — desirability built through scarcity, long waiting periods, and years of relationship-building with clients. Buying a Royal Oak requires not only substantial spending but patience and social capital; customers have waited years and spent tens of thousands of dollars to gain access to that ecosystem. Those customers are now watching the Royal Oak identity appear as a $400 pocket watch hanging from handbags, belts, and social feeds. By insisting Royal Pop is “not a watch,” Audemars Piguet may have changed the form without changing the symbolism. Most consumers will not parse the technical distinction between a pocket watch and a wristwatch. They simply see the Royal Oak becoming accessible. That risks alienating the very customers who built the brand’s value in the first place. The stakes become even higher given what the Royal Oak represents to Audemars Piguet’s bottom line. According to estimates by luxury consultancy LuxeConsult, the collection accounts for over 90% of the brand’s revenue. Using a peripheral product to court younger consumers is one thing; placing the brand’s single most valuable asset at the center of a mass-market collaboration is another. Collaboration fatigue compounds the risk. A decade ago, brand partnerships generated genuine surprise precisely because they were rare. Today, luxury consumers are saturated with them: fashion with toys, watches with sneakers, beauty with gaming, high-end labels with fast fashion. The more frequently they arrive, the faster the novelty expires. Hype and luxury operate on fundamentally different clocks. Hype is engineered for acceleration — the louder the moment, the faster it tends to disappear. Luxury creates value through endurance: pieces collected, inherited, passed between generations. Royal Pop generated extraordinary visibility. Visibility, however, has never been luxury’s core currency. The Jing Take reports on a piece of the leading news and presents our editorial team’s analysis of the key implications for the luxury industry. In the recurring column, we analyze everything from product drops and mergers to heated debate sprouting on Chinese social media.

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When Audemars Piguet’s Royal Oak became a bag charm

How Bottega Veneta weaved China’s forever it bag