I think the artificial scarcity thing can be levelled at Rolex to a degree, especially in the way they try to push people into buying higher-margin gold models to get access to the steel stuff that ought to be bread and butter products, but a) they're cranking out a million watches a year and b) other (higher end) brands are so much worse – creating limited pieces that they know will be in the highest demand, pre-selling certain watches only to certain customers, or quickly discontinuing popular models/configurations.
The worst thing is, the collectors of those brands actually encourage that sort of behaviour from the brand in order to protect the value of their collections. Rolex sells far too many watches to care about collectors. I really do think they're mostly just in the thick of it with the way recent global demand has gone (over the last 5-7 years). No-one else is increasing production right now (there are Swiss brands taking government support to furlough their workers because they’re sitting on so much inventory). I know it's an odd position to take but I have a degree of sympathy for the ADs.
I think the artificial scarcity thing can be levelled at Rolex to a degree, especially in the way they try to push people into buying higher-margin gold models to get access to the steel stuff that ought to be bread and butter products, but a) they're cranking out a million watches a year and b) other (higher end) brands are so much worse – creating limited pieces that they know will be in the highest demand, pre-selling certain watches only to certain customers, or quickly discontinuing popular models/configurations.
The worst thing is, the collectors of those brands actually encourage that sort of behaviour from the brand in order to protect the value of their collections. Rolex sells far too many watches to care about collectors. I really do think they're mostly just in the thick of it with the way recent global demand has gone (over the last 5-7 years). No-one else is increasing production right now (there are Swiss brands taking government support to furlough their workers because they’re sitting on so much inventory). I know it's an odd position to take but I have a degree of sympathy for the ADs.