The Swatch Moment
By Yoel Frischoff
When a killer feature hits your category, you can deny, retreat, or reinvent. Swatch has done it before – the question is whether it can do it again.
In May 2025, Steven Wood of GreenWood Investors went public with a blunt assessment of Swatch Group. The stock had fallen from a peak of CHF600 to CHF148 – a 75% decline. Omega and Longines, the group’s premium anchors, had posted 20% and 29% sales declines since 2019. Breguet, one of the oldest names in watchmaking, was losing money. Wood pushed for board representation, calling out limited shareholder engagement and centralized control by the Hayek family.
A decade earlier, in August 2015, CEO Nick Hayek had dismissed the force behind this erosion – Apple Watch – as “an interesting toy that can’t last more than 24 hours.” Ten years and 75% of shareholder value later, the toy is still ticking. The question is whether a brand that was born from one disruption can survive another.
