GENEVA – Swatch Group’s next low-priced luxury offering is a collaboration with storied Swiss watchmaker Blancpain that will sell a budget version of a diver’s watch linked to renowned French oceanographer, explorer, and filmmaker Jacques Cousteau.

The Bioceramic Scuba Fifty Fathoms, a range of five watches whose colours and designs reflect each of the world’s oceans, will be available in selected Swatch stores globally from Saturday.

They will cost US$400 (S$565), a fraction of the tens of thousands of dollars that a Blancpain timepiece can retail for.

Swatch Group – which owns a portfolio of watch brands, ranging from the affordable Swatch line to various luxury brands – is doubling down on its strategy to offer budget versions of premium timepieces.

The new partnership follows 2022’s Swatch tie-up with its Omega brand that saw thousands of shoppers from Melbourne to Geneva queue at stores to snap up a MoonSwatch. Swatch has just launched a new version of the collection in an effort to reinvigorate interest in the collaboration.

After an unprecedented surge during the pandemic, demand for pricey watches from top Swiss brands has cooled amid a slowing global economy, rising interest rates and surging inflation. That has seen prices for the most hyped items plunge on the secondary market.

Created 70 years ago and viewed as the first modern diver’s watch, Fifty Fathoms pieces were popular with military divers in France, Spain, Germany and the United States.

Famed oceanographer Cousteau selected the watch for his team of divers during the filming of his Oscar-winning film The Silent World.

The new watches use Swatch’s Sistem51 mechanical movement, have luminescent hands and hour markers, and are inscribed with “No Radiations” in a nod to Blancpain’s historic timepieces.

Like the name suggests, the watches are waterproof to 50 fathoms – or 90m for landlubbers. BLOOMBERG