Post pics of your watches Part II

They have a lovely range of them in Keane's Limerick now too. Still no actual stock tho and even the list is a guessing game as varying stock is supplied it seems.

ive heard that about Datejusts which is a little odd. You can basically get one in less than 6 months from an AD whereas its who knows for anything else.. it makes sense its the most sales as its the most available... but if it was most in demand wouldn't it hold true its less available like the other models? or is it just easier to make datejusts?

The amount of work involved in selling 5billion of watches would be staggering .Patek & AP do boutique only but they make approx 50k pieces year , Rolex are rumoured to be up to 1.2 - 1.4 million pieces a year now .Only viable option for a sales channel direct to consumer at that level is to use local a sales AD .Rolex are selling everything they've got and they've already said its not them choking supply , its the ADs. A drastic price rise of 50-100% would in the long term have a negative affect on their brand so understandable that they nudge it up 5 -10% instead.

Few reasons.

1. Rolex is set up as a charity and this means their annual price increases are limited by the articles or their incorporation. It give them other advantages they would not want to give up (tax mostly). This mean they could not jump to retail quickly enough to make it worth their while. A penny saved is a penny erarned and at the moment they do what they are good at and leave the front facing stuff to AD's.
2. That a lot of property to buy or rent and fit out. Would need to be premium high street a lot of places. And they only have one product to sell and AD will have jewellery etc to fall back on also.
3. That a lot of staff to pay.
4. Lot of fixed overheads they currently dont have
5. If they went online everyone would just want Stainless sports. These are Rolex's least profitable watches.
6. The system as is, seems to be working pretty good for them. What's the impetus to change?
7. At the moment Rolex have only AD's as customers maybe 2000 round the world. If they set up their own they would have to deal will millions of customers every year and all the ball ache that goes with that.
8. AD are contracted to buy a certain number of watches a year, this has seen Rolex good in hard times. Direct sales means they have to take the rough times with the smooth.
9. AD are contracted to take bundled stock, they get various watches and no choice in what they get. If direct sale the production system would have to shift to a made to order system loosing a lot of the economy of sale of batch production. Other solution would be to hold stock but that again is expensive to do.
10. Rolex at the moment go a lot on that back of the ADs marketing and advertising....without they would have to increase their already massive marketing spend to get that all persuasive penetration they have at the moment. They would also create competition with they ex customers the AD's who would now have high street shops selling competing products.

Its a old and complex system and I am well sure that Rolex have run the numbers every which way many years ago. The AD system works for them, they produce a lot of watches and have a lot of stock to sell. AD's get 35% as far as I know. It would not take long for Rolex to soak up that extra profit in expenses (give point 1 above). Sure AP and VC and ALS have boutiques but they make a fraction of the watches, and only a handfull around the world.

Exhibition watches are better than nothing if you like blue balls.

Real externals but no working movement .The weight is the same though

I'd say so. There's a lad on insta that sells quite a bit of vintage dealer gear and it always fetches quite a bit.

Loving the stowa...very tempted to get a bronze offering at some point from them

The same photo in 2 days time will be perfect

The extra services are the best.

Things like ….

Being made feel grateful for spending 10 grand.

Having to buy an omega or 5 at full retail.

Being given the impression you don’t really own it as if they see it for sale they will kill your family

an umbrella or hat you would be ashamed to use in public unless you happen to be at the Ryder cup.

that kinda thinking will get you cancelled my friend, the carry on days are over 😀

You can’t beat the security of buying direct from an AD .100 % guaranteed the watch is legit and if any problems with it you have full comeback.Ignoring Rolex as we are all just peasants to Rolex AD , but getting to know an AD makes it a lot easier to get lower supply watches .I don’t envy ADs , they are caught in a hard position with the way the watch market is at the moment

Yeah that’s true all right .I had a watch I had to return a few weeks ago and I was glad I only had to bring it back into the shop and not have the hassle of posting it back somewhere if I had bought online .