How the Secret ‘Project Galileo’ Gave Rise to the MoonSwatch

The president of the Swiss Confederation traveled to Japan in April to hold talks with the prime minister. The office requested an example of what had just become the hottest Swiss watch to launch in years, if not decades: the $260 Swatch produced version of Omega's Speedmaster Moonwatch.

The president of Switzerland was not lucky. Nick Hayek Jr., chief executive of Swatch Group, said that the only way that he could get the watch was if he sent someone from his office queueing to the Swatch shop in Bern.

Hayek, a 67-year-old billionaire who drives himself to work in a Mini and has a pirate's flag flying outside his office, is proud of the fact that privileged access is not included in the MoonSwatch. If you have a lot of money, it doesn't help. They rang all the clients of the Patek Philippe, the Breguet, and the Richard Mille. Everyone wants one. It doesn't matter if you give us $10,000 or not. You have to go to the store to purchase it. That is the game-changing change.

Since the launch of the MoonSwatch on March 26, there has been a question of luck, timing, and sheer endurance as to where to find it.

The news had been coming out slowly. It is time to change your Omega... Swatch and it was advertised in newspapers on March 17th. There was a planetary theme to the social media feeds before the Swatch watches were announced.

The Mission to the Sun was bright yellow, the Mission to Neptune was deep blue, and the Mission to Jupiter was beige and orange.

The MoonSwatch is a fusion of high and low, luxury and affordable, legendary and novelty. Hayek defines it as a model that Swatch pioneered: Its collaborations with artists, designers, brands, institutions, and more have been central to its identity. It had little precedent to bring this to the world of luxury watches.

Hayek says that the MoonSwatch has caught on because it is a brand with a clear message on the opposite side of the scale. It is easy to understand for everyone. It was straight to the people's hearts.

There is a dark side to the moon.

The hype train took over once news of the product was out, along with the message that distribution would be limited to just a few Swatch boutiques around the world. The watches wouldn't be on sale for two more days, but that didn't stop the queueing at Oxford Street. There were tents around the world.

On sale day, store managers were faced with throngs of thousands of people who were intent on charging high prices. Swatch's original plan to allow buyers two watches each had been reduced to one each, hardly helping a mood that had reportedly changed, from camaraderie to restless and agitated. It hasn't changed in a long time.

Stores opened at 9 am. All three London shops were forced to close after the Carnaby Street location lasted less than an hour. There were rumors that a person had been stabbed in the line. The Swatch shop in Singapore was forced to close for 10 days in order to allow the chaos to play out.

Most of the shops in the world had less than 200 watches available, so police were needed to help staff. The deals were done in the queue. Within minutes of the first sales, MoonSwatches were getting bids into the thousands.

When we meet at Swatch Group's headquarters in Switzerland, Nick Hayek tells us that it's not limited, don't buy on the internet from flippers, and you'll be able to get your MoonSwatch at some point in the future. He doesn't believe that Swatch could have been better prepared. The product is beautiful, provocative, high quality, and the price is great, and we kept it a secret. Nobody in the world could have predicted that. It wasn't normal.

The crowds may have dispersed, but the lack of availability of the MoonSwatch has led to widespread discontent. There are some comments on Swatch's posts that do not make sense.

Those who got hold of a MoonSwatch made that statement. What could have been seen as a downmarket disrespect of a legendary timepiece has received a lot of enthusiasm.

James Marks is the head of the contemporary watch division of thePhillips auction house. It is captivating the next generation of collector with a play on something that is otherwise out of reach. There are people around the world who have a bright watch on their wrist that has history, intrigue, and the connection to space.

Marks says he would like to get one, but he hasn't handled one yet.

The targeting of the next generation is one of the most innovative parts of the launch. A study by an insurance firm in the UK found that the average age of the owner of a luxury watch is68. The Apple Watch has taken Swatch's biggest chunk out of the market for battery- powered watches. Omega can expose a completely new audience to it through this affordable collaboration. It appears to be working. Omega stores have seen a spike in sales since the MoonSwatch arrived.

The MoonSwatch has had a large cut-through with the platform's Gen Z audience. More than 2,000 MoonSwatch trades were reported by the site in less than a week after launch.

The best-selling watch release in StockX history has the highest premium of any item released this year. There is a lot of foresight when it comes to branding. If this is a discovery point for Omega, it's similar to what Abloh did when he used an accessible medium to shine a light on things that have been reserved for the elite.

There is growth of bioceramic.

Nick Hayek said that it was a determination to highlight the qualities of Bioceramic that led to the MoonSwatch. The bioceramic amalgamate is a ceramic substance made from the oil of castor beans and is used in high-end watches. The result is an evolved form of plastic with the scratch resistance and solidity of ceramic, a silky matt finish that is noticeably different to that of normal plastic, and a greatly reduced carbon footprint.

The shape of the Speedmaster case, with its complex planes and angles, are unlike anything in a plastic Swatch watch. Bioceramic is hard to sell in a fast-paced pop culture world.

Hayek says that it is difficult to communicate the technical nature of Bioceramic. Other Swatch Group brands were interested in working with the material; while Hayek was determined that it should remain a Swatch product only, he was aware that the status and heritage of a classic watch could raise Bioceramics profile Hayek showed me prototypes of possible Bioceramic versions of Omega's Seamaster 300 and the Fifty Fathoms. There was only one true contender.

The NASA Swatch made him think about the Speedmaster. There's a real story to be told to many young people in the world who don't know that it was on the moon. It would be a real provocation if Swatch and Omega Speedmaster collaborated.

The curator of Omega's museum, Petros Protopapas, gave Hayek's Speedmaster prototype a thumbs up. Omega's CEO took more persuading. He was pale when he saw the Omega Speedmaster as a Swatch. I asked if we could do it as a customer service watch. We can think about it. He was sold after seeing a more fully realized product.

Hayek was able to steal Omega's head of product, Gregory Kissling, to oversee the internal project code name, "Galileo." Someone would have done me a Swatch. He is not making an Omega product, but he is making a Swatch product. Hayek needs that Omega input.

It was Kissling who came up with the idea of linking the colors of the solar system. The red-and-white Mission to Mars version is inspired by prototypes made in the early 1970s for the Alaska Project, a short-lived research program that produced the ultimate watch. The Ultraman Speedmaster worn in a Japanese TV show from the 70s of the same name is one of the collector favorites.

The MoonSwatch's layout shows that it is a Swatch. The brand has been using a movement that has two upper subdials instead of one at 9 and 3 o'clock. The original Omega Moonwatch can be found at the third subdial at 6 o'clock.

Hayek says that it means there are layers that can be peeled off. Even if you don't see the connection, it's cool because you can find the historical connections if you want to. This is a wonderful aspect.

The focus was on pushing the bioplastic technology further and creating new colors. It's hard. Hayek said that they were doing everything for the first time. To create colors that are not yet used, we challenged our production facilities and labs. It had to change the way it was done.

The initial success of Swatch Group, under the leadership of Hayek's late father, Nicholas G. Hayek, went back to the initial success of Bioceramic. The Swiss watch industry was on the verge of collapse during the economic crises of the 70s and 80s, and Hayek was tasked by creditor banks to turn around the fortunes of a group of companies. The huge success of the fun, plastic Swatch watch, launched by the group's subsidiary, helped reenergize Swiss watchmaking more broadly and millions of dollars poured into Hayek's conglomerate. He took it out of the public eye.

Today's empire consists of not just blue-chip brands such as Breguet, but also high tech production hubs, research laboratories, and component factories. Swatch has been able to develop, patent, and manufacture bioceramic entirely in-house thanks to this network of intellectual property and technology. Hayek claims that other industries are looking at the possibilities. He needs for Swatch all the bioceramic he can make.

It was produced like clockwork.

The manufacturing process is very delicate. The raw ingredients of the material are fed into a machine which amalgamates them at a temperature of 200 C. The spaghetti-like strings of Bioceramic emerge from this and are then cooled and made into a feedstock.

The Bioceramic parts include the monobloc case, pushers and crown, battery cover, and loop.

Production within the Swatch Group is much like an engineering challenge. The Swatch production facilities are located in the same location as the historic manufacturer of watch movements, ETA. The headquarters of the company is in Grenchen, while automated assembly lines are found nearby. Asulab, an advanced research facility, and Comadur, a pioneer in the field of ceramics, create the zirconium oxide powder.

Hayek said that many of the things they are doing are new. The MoonSwatch requires a new technique to deliver tiny precise images using ink droplets of just six micro liters. We were driven to be as quick as possible and so we did the homologation in parallel. There would be more time for information if we took more time. It would have lost a lot of the power.

The production has been done quickly. The first MoonSwatches were made in February this year, the month before the launch, after Gregory Kissling presented his idea to Hayek. It would take six months to make the injection mold tooling for the Bioceramic components. In six weeks, it was accomplished.

Some owners of the deep-blue Mission to Neptune model found stains on their wrists after they wore it. It is harder to achieve full saturation colors with Bioceramic than it is with pastels. For colors like the red of the Mission to Mars model and the Neptune blue, additional passes through the extruder are used to compound the material more densely. The scales were tipped too much. The Swatch Group says that the staining happened with a small number of people. After a few wears, an initial blue smudge on my wrist stopped appearing.

A new recipe for the color is being created. Due to their rarity, the few Neptune models that appear on resale sites are fetching eye-watering prices compared to the other models. There were a few Neptunes listed at over $2,500 on the pre-owned platform. Most MoonSwatch models have settled at market values of between $480 and $1,100, which is still a great return on an unlimited $260 watch.

The MoonSwatch isn't for most people. The frustration among prospective buyers has been compounded by Swatch's vague communications on the likelihood of ecommerce availability: messaging that the MoonSwatch remains unavailable online "for now" suggests that it will be at some point in the future. Hayek says that there are no plans to sell MoonSwatch online. He says to ask him in four months if it can play a role. It is something of a pertinence to those who live far away from a Swatch store.

The question isn't relevant in this day and age. Even if Swatch wanted to, it wouldn't be able to fulfill the online demand for MoonSwatch. Hayek states that the machines are running at full capacity 24 hours a day to try and meet the demand in the brick and mortar locations. Our aim is not to hastily throw out millions of MoonSwatches into the market and build three times more factories, which you can't do anyways. The MoonSwatch is not about making a lot of money in a short period.

Hayek says that the most burdensome part of the process is the creation of the feedstock and that's why new manufacturing equipment is being installed. For a company that makes more than three million watches a year, the investment in a single product line is huge.

Hayek thinks that the tight distribution of the MoonSwatch has limited their access to it. An online drop would expose Swatch to the people who sell stuff on the internet. He told frustrated customers that there will be millions of MoonSwatches.

The crazy prices of speculators will come down because they are not limited. We can't serve everyone at the same time. Hayek thinks that patience has become a vastly underestimated virtue. It's not possible to make everything available to everyone instantly and comfortably if the world is serious about sustainable living. The MoonSwatch is not a commodity. This is about fun and provocation. It was Swiss made.