I used to work in the heart of Soho in central London. Occasionally, I’d walk to the office first thing in the morning and there would already be a queue of young people, sometimes stretching for about 100 yards, outside a shop called Supreme. They were waiting patiently for its doors to open. I learned that this was a clothing shop favoured by skateboarders and urban youths, which started as a small store in New York and turned into a global phenomenon by mastering the art of modern marketing.
That is, it was one of the first brands which recognised that today’s consumer, of all ages, it seems, is motivated by the scarcity of an item as much as its inherent value. And if you can create enough hype around the brand through social media, get a spot of celebrity endorsement and then restrict the supply, you’ve got instant desirability. Before you know it, you’ve got a queue snaking around the streets of London.
The past couple of days have seen, in English cities, the very apogee of this marketing ploy. The watch brand Swatch was forced to close its stores throughout the UK after huge crowds descended on them. Scuffles broke out in Manchester, a dispersal order was put in place in Birmingham and police dogs were deployed in London. Throughout Europe, the story was the same, and in Paris, tear gas was fired to control unruly shoppers.
And what was the cause of this shopping frenzy? The launch of a £335 pocket watch called the Royal Pop, a collection of eight models and the result of a collaboration between Swatch and the high-end watch-maker Audemars Piguet (it is modelled on their Royal Oak range, which retails at £30,000).
The mayhem at their stores is not a crisis situation for Swatch; it is the result of a carefully choreographed piece of commercial enterprise. Through a social media campaign, the Royal Pop’s desirability was accentuated by giving it the patina of exclusivity at an affordable price. It was only to be sold in-store, to be launched on a certain date – the “drop” was Saturday – and limited availability created a demand that was impossible to satisfy.
Hence, the queues, for all to see, are at the shops. And, as we know, a queue outside a store, or restaurant, or bar, or at a ticket office, begets only a bigger queue (cf Supreme, Pokémon cards, or types of trainers); and in the rush to get a fashionable item with rarity value, there is always the potential for an orderly queue to turn into a frenzied mob. We can probably take the company’s official plea for shoppers to resist coming to their stores with a pinch of salt. All in all, it was a job well done by the Swatch marketing team.
But enough about them. What do the events of the weekend say about us? Are we just gullible fools, too easily manipulated by a textbook piece of hype? Or was there a performative element in the queuing, the sense that people want to be part of an event, to have the hot ticket, to experience a connection with like-minded souls? Or maybe the Royal Pop is a clever, subtle and popular subversion of the luxury market, where things are priced way beyond the reach of most of us?
I guess all this is possibly true, but the fact is that, in the modern consumerist world, scarcity isn’t a supply problem to be solved; it’s a marketing tool to be cultivated. The limited edition release of a fashion item, provided there is enough “heat” around it, creates an exclusivity (and, indeed, a resale value) that goes way beyond its essential quality. Those who went to Swatch stores over the weekend want rarity – and the chance to show off on Instagram – much more than utility.
So it is that the Royal Pop doesn’t fulfil a need in anyone’s life. It’s more a symbol of how smart, how ahead of the game or how culturally connected you are. The scenes we have seen in British cities over the weekend are another interesting example of this shift in retail behaviour.
It may be a £335 watch that people are queuing for, but Swatch is actually selling something much less tangible, and much more valuable. Desire. And, boy, are we buying it.
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