Swatch (stylized as swatch) is a Swiss watchmaker founded in 1983 by Nicolas Hayek and a subsidiary of The Swatch Group. The Swatch product line was developed as a response to the “quartz crisis” of the 1970s and 1980s, in which Asian-made digital watches were competing against traditional European-made mechanical watches.
The name Swatch is a contraction of “second watch”, as the watches were intended as casual, disposable accessories.