Pros
SWATCH brand is very fun, great product, great looking stores, and some loyal following as a brand. Company now stands behind pricing and does not go on sale in retail doors. Department stores and wholesale accounts have an advantage though as they cheat the system and find ways to give customers a deal. Dress code is nice and simple, and makes the product look good, thereby making it easy to sell.
Cons
US customers see SWATCH as a fashion brand... looking for fun watches, and the latest trends. Company sees itself as a technical product genius, and does not want to be fashion at all. So when customer stops by looking for "fun large face white watch" we don't have that product. US division does not do annual reviews for the field and most employees never see a raise. Some districts have found a way to get raises, but that may just be rumor. Keeping people motivated with this fact is an obvious challenge. Training program is long and systems are outdated. 9 steps of selling is just too many steps. Company is operated via checklists, but not ones that streamline things, checklists that prove that someone trained you on this and now its YOUR job to do this 13 page job responsibility checklist. Secret shop does not match training provided, and questions change frequently. Swatch division does not have clear goals, and runs too many contests that are not realistic, nor drive any result. For example, when trend is -15% we don't want a contest to be +15%, when you do that most people do not try. One challenge to goals is customer traffic, very little done to drive traffic to stores and no client thank you cards to drive your own traffic through repeat business. Biggest challenge to achieving goals is product. The US division is rewarded for the lowest product levels worldwide to achieve product turnover rates. This means no one outside of NYC area has product. Allocations will not order enough for stores to make goals, you must always sell what is available and the customer will not buy the last one in the store. So while everyone knows that this is a problem, no one has done anything to increase inventory levels to affect this. Product feedback seems to go nowhere, and launch dates are a joke when only half of the monthly launch arrives in the month it releases. Discount is good, but they make you wait for 3 months to use it, thereby training people to not buy product, and guidelines for "special packaging" which are no discount, and when you can buy something "new" seem to change from one district to another. These unclear guidelines means no one buys new product to wear to work.
