I was walking by the Swatch store in April of 2022 on my trip to New York when I first saw the Moonswatch, I was not expecting to fall in love with the simple design at least not again. I was never a watch person but there was only one instance before where I had fallen in love with the design of a watch, it was with the Gshock lineup back in 2013.
I knew when I first saw the watch at Times Square that I had to have one and every day on my three-week trip I would stop by the Times Square and World Trade Station outlets to check for stock. While I had an amazing holiday, I did leave a little disappointed knowing I would not be able to get this watch.
After coming back to Dubai, I finally managed to bring myself to go to the local stores and stand in line from 6 am at times, however, I always missed getting the watch by one or two slots. I commend the people who got it by getting there at 3 am. I had not seen such a phenomenon for any other product before apart from the night before an Apple launch event.
Honestly, with other commitments, I stopped trying to get the Moonswatch. The prices had gone to the moon (pun intended) with some scalping the watch for absurd prices. I am not sure if many went for this price but it was crazy considering its retail price was around 900 AED
I tried a few more times in 2023 however this was the peak of demand, swatch official stores were offering a booking option and by this point had even released a few special editions such as Snoopy to the Moon and a Mission to Moonshine Gold. The caveat with the booking was that you could only do it if you bought another swatch product.
Swatch capitalized on this very well, more so considering that it was a cobranded product with Omega which did play a big part in the value proposition it offered. In my opinion, this was one of the best co-branded products that I have seen.
Moving to 2024, I had a particularly long day when I decided to check the prices online, to my surprise they had dropped everywhere with some dubizzle listers willing to offer it for almost what it would cost retail. This was my moment to get one, I knew that I had to so I drove to Dubai Mall to pick one up.
There was just one issue at this point, do I go for Mission to Mercury or the bespoke Moonswatch? this was a hard choice since the Moon watch had a better strap but the Mission to Mercury had a better dial design. The sales associate here suggested buying both but I was adamant on buying one.
After some back and forth, I decided to get a strap off Amazon which met my requirements and went ahead with the Mission to Mercury. I got this idea from a colleague who managed to snag one and do the same back in 2023.
My journey to get a moon watch was one of almost two years, I think it was well wait for the wait. At this point, I have owned the watch for over a month and have enjoyed every second of it, setting it up did require me to look up how but I guess that is what happens when a techaholic person gets something so analogue.
