What time is it? Watches and horology

i couldn't agree more.

Just got this for my mates birthday (I’m not paying for it btw, just found it for him) and I think it looks great.
36mm DJ on a 8in wrist.

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😞

Mrs Underuser needed to replace the fabric strap oe on her reverso, she went for this beauty

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Lovely!

Sorry I still don't fully get it, are you talking about buying Rolex watches from the showroom? Can you not even order one with the waiting list as a 'normal' person? Not even a black Sub for example?

No.

'not even a black sub'.

Arguably the most wait listed watch of them all.

even as a friend

any steel professional piece is scarce . and some datejust depending on dial colour .

Just buy an Omega .

Makes sense really. I'm not in the market for a Rolex but all these stories really make it very unappealing as a brand. Who wants to feed that business model. Not me!

Haha!

Are they really limiting production or it's just a question of enormous demand for a product that does take some special materials, time and skill to manufacture.

They are superlative watch makers. Read up on the detail that goes into material selection and the handling of materials and then decide if it's a business model or simply a question of scale. They are already making 800,000 watches per year.

Don't they also sell the most luxury watches in the whole Swiss industry?
So, there really must be a lot of people looking to make a quick profit as well as genuine customers (who buy 3 a year and keep them all ;-) ).

Edit: Also, I think a big factor for the demand (the quick flips aside) is the fact you ''can't get them''. And obviously, if you can't get something - you want it more.

I'm not in the market for a Rolex but all these stories really make it very unappealing as a brand. Who wants to feed that business model. Not me!

I wrote a long thing yesterday and deleted it. But yeah. It's really only a recent thing, like the last 10 years. It isn't necessarily their business model, they just aren't acting to alleviate demand by increasing supply (even if they were able to, which is debatable - why invest huge amounts in an additional facility, if you make loads more watches and then the demand goes away?). It's a conundrum, the negative brand sentiment is surely damaging, even if the brand equity is strengthened due to the perceived value of the product.

Thierry Stern is saying what Rolex are thinking:

https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/thierry-stern-patek-philippe-steel-watches-nautilus

These companies want to sell gold watches. They don't want steel to take over. Once it does, you can't go back to selling gold. He cites IWC and AP as cautionary tales.

You don't know what's going to happen to the market. It's all based on speculation and there have been times in the past where watches become overvalued, the bubble bursts and prices crash. For long-established manufacturers like Rolex and PP, the best strategy is to hold firm. They might be leaving money on the table in the short term but these are businesses that think far, far longer term than most companies.

I agree with @Airhead, Rolex product is the best it's ever been. I don't really blame Rolex for the supply and demand issue, it's purely driven by people using it as an investment asset class. Their refusal to be short-termist is a survival strategy. It's just risk aversion.

Good morning I hope everyone is doing well
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Er ahem for the record here's my two pence worth on the subject
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Peace and love

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It's exactly that reason, they've become an investment asset class due to low interest rates and other monetary policy. It's not just Rolex though, just happens that they can still make nearly a million a year and it doesn't dilute the secondary market values.

Probably easier to say when you own a couple of Rolex but the advice to look at Omega is not bad. If you look back through this thread there are loads of watches that look better than the Rolex models.

I would like a GMT Master, have done since a colleague turned up wearing one- I could have bought one for £4,200 at that point by walking straight into WOS on Oxford Street and handing over the money. I do feel like I missed the boat there- but I wonder how many could have predicted today’s situation.

I will own one someday, but at £16,000 I have a lot of other priorities that come first- and indeed second, third, fourth and fifth.

I’ve found that it depends on the AD, my mate must of spent well over 200k in the last 5 yrs at our local shop but when he asked to get on a waiting list for the new explorer 124270 in 36mm the manager was talking about 2-3yrs. I asked about it with the guy that runs the service dept and he says he can get me one within a year. There doesn’t seem any real rules they stick with. Same with the Nautilis they do show up it’s just wether or not they want to do you a ‘favour’ kinda thing and sell it to you.
A big thing is they don’t want you to just flip ‘em if they know your gonna keep it or it’s for a first time Rolex buyer they do try and help, we’ve managed to get a gmt, Daytona and a milgauss over the last year from the same shop, sorry for the crap photos

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PSA: I see the skeleton GA-2100 (aka the clear Casioak) is back in stock:

https://g-shock.co.uk/ga-2100ske-7aer

👍

Thinking a bit more about this Rolex stuff, they should just increase their prices. In the past there was a bigger gap between Rolex and a lot of other brands, then you had PP etc.

That's kind of how I feel about it too. Rolex have always been positioned as one up from entry level in the greater scheme of the luxury watch market. Why not just make the things far more expensive if you want to engineer them to be more desirable?

Also they clearly have an audience willing to pay a lot more on the secondary market. Although, as Regal has mentioned, they want to be making diamond encrusted precious metal models and as a manufacturer that's a big part of the equation.

My old sales director bought a white gold Daytona because he didn’t want to wait for the steel version- which he would have preferred. Now he was and I suspect is a massive dick but I imagine Rolex would be over the moon if more people followed his lead.