BAD TIMING: Swiss watchmaker Swatch on Friday made it to the Weibo top trending news ranking for the wrong reason.
The brand was called out by online spectators in China on Thursday after an image of an Asian model making a slant eye pose while promoting the brand’s Camo Flash model in an orange and blue color way was spotted on the brand’s website.
The image has since been pulled across Swatch’s website globally, and the brand has told local media that “the issue is being taken seriously and will be forwarded to the relevant authorities.”
The controversy has garnered more than 2.6 million impressions on Weibo, China’s X-like social media platform.
Many online spectators on Weibo considered the pose “offensive and disrespectful” toward the Asian community, and demanded that the brand issue an official apology.
The slant eye controversy came at an unfortunate time for the Swatch Group in China, just as it began to see its first positive signs of improvement in the region for the second half of 2025, including e-commerce gains and a reduction of inventory at retailers, the group said in July.
In the first half of 2025, Swatched logged an 88 percent slump in net income to 17 million Swiss francs, or $21.1 million.
The Swatch Group continued to attribute a negative impact on sales and results to weak consumption in Greater China, which includes the Hong Kong and Macau special administrative regions, as well as Southeast Asia, due to the drop in Chinese tourists.
The company also said that the first half’s 7.9 percent decline in sales came “exclusively” from Greater China, which has fallen from making a third of Swatch’s total sales to a 24 percent share in the past 18 months.
In a recent report, HSBC downgraded the Swatch Group to reduce as it “has been very consistently losing market share” with the exception of Omega.
“Macro considerations aside, we don’t see what means the group has to beat peers and see this as a structural issue. Shares recently rebounded on hopes on China recovery and through sales and margin, but we see limited value unlocks,” HSBC added.
WWD has reached out to Swatch Group for comment.