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Business Insider

When watch aficionado Adam Golden stepped into his local Rolex dealer’s shop in Florida this summer, there was just a solitary Lady Datejust available for sale.
Had the customer who originally ordered it not changed their mind, there would have been none, he said.
Rolex reportedly makes close to a million watches per year, and advertisements are almost everywhere, but actually finding one to buy can prove to be an exercise in futility.
Its watches have always been expensive, but the scarcity and pricing today are a far cry from the days when distributors had plenty of inventory to sell at more negotiable prices, according to Jeffrey Hess, a Rolex collector and the co-author of Rolex Wristwatches: An Unauthorized History.

Rolex did not respond to requests for comment on this story.
“Back then, anybody could afford a Rolex,” Hess said. “I drove around buying [Daytonas] for US$3,000. Today, it’s a US$50,000 item on the secondary market.”
8 rainbow-coloured watches to wear for Pride Month, or for fun
Hess said the 1980s marked a turning point in the company’s public image, when the brand went from being an essential precision tool for professionals and adventurers to become the highly prized luxury collectible it is today.
“This watch was never meant to be a fashion watch,” he said. “It was meant to be a roughneck’s watch. It was meant to be a watch for swimmers, submariners, explorers.”
Indeed, for much of the 20th century, Rolex under its founder Hans Wilsdorf was at the cutting edge of horological innovation. From the radical idea to put a clock on a wrist, to plunging it into the English Channel, to summiting Mount Everest, to clocking land speed records, the brand emphasised utility and reliability.

When Wilsdorf died in 1960, he was succeeded by Rolex’s marketing director, André Heiniger, who spearheaded the decades-long effort to secure the brand’s link with luxury.
“Rolex,” Heiniger reportedly said, “is not in the watch business. We are in the luxury business.”
True to form, the brand boosted its visibility with placements in Hollywood films, sporting event sponsorships, and philanthropic awards. It also instituted a tighter grip on its supply, which enabled it to increase quality control and maintain an allure of scarcity.

By the 1970s, these efforts to project an image of reliability and stability put Rolex in a prime position to be a safe store of value during economic uncertainty. For example, the US abandoned the gold standard for the dollar in 1971, in 1972 Italy tightened its control of the lira, and in 1973 an oil crisis sent financial markets reeling.
The Italians were the first to embrace the vintage Rolex business, Hess said, because watches were a stable and portable alternative to currency during this period.
Dealers would buy luxury watches in Switzerland to carry across the border and sell in Italy. Italians would then wear the Rolexes, Audemars Piguets, and Patek Philippes to the US and elsewhere, where they would sell them for many times the amount of cash they could otherwise bring with them. Thus a collectors’ market was born.
It’s the watch that all these guys buy when they make it. They all buy the little wannabe Rolex brands in the beginning and finally, when they achieve success, they buy that Rolex
Jeffrey Hess, co-author of Rolex Wristwatches: An Unauthorized History
Heiniger retired in 1997, but the company has stuck to the playbook he perfected, even as more precise, versatile, and affordable alternatives have replaced Rolex’s original purpose.
If anything, the intervening decades have supercharged the growth of the category. As a private (and notoriously secretive) company, Rolex doesn’t disclose its financials, but Morgan Stanley estimated the company made 5.2 billion Swiss Francs (US$5.9 billion) in sales for 2019.
Meanwhile, a recent study from McKinsey and The Business of Fashion projects the secondary market for luxury watches to top US$29 billion in sales by 2025.

“There’s a lot less trust right now in the stability of fiat currencies than what we had before,” Tim Stracke, CEO of Chrono24, the world’s largest online luxury watch marketplace, said in an interview.
“If I compare the stability of a Euro, or US dollar, versus a Rolex Daytona, a bitcoin, a kilogram of gold? I’d rather have the hard assets,” Stracke said.
That reputation has helped Rolex crush the competition, with a quarter of the luxury watch market – more than double that of runner-up Omega. Plus, Rolex’s dominance is self-reinforcing, Hess says.
“It’s the watch that all these guys buy when they make it,” he said. “They all buy the little wannabe Rolex brands in the beginning and finally, when they achieve success, they buy that Rolex.”
In other words, without a Rolex, you really haven’t arrived yet. It’s not just the emblem of luxury, it’s the front door.


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Style Edit: Rolex debuts Land-Dweller, Settimo bracelet for Perpetual 1908 and dial for GMT-Master II, and drops new colours for Perpetual, Datejust 31, Daytona, GMT-Master II and Sky-Dweller

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Gold watches from Van Cleef & Arpels, Cartier, Chanel, Bulgari, Piaget and others stole the spotlight at Watches and Wonders 2025 in Geneva, with sculptural pieces among the striking launches

Timepieces

How Rolex became the top luxury watch brand in the world, from its origins as a maker of precision timepieces for professionals and adventurers

Rolex watches used to be precision items for professionals and adventurers, before being rebranded as luxury fashion collectibles. Photo: Chelsea Lauren /WireImage

Rolex watches have gone from being reliable, precision timepieces for professionals to luxury fashion statements and collectors’ items. Photo: Shutterstock

Rolex Oyster Perpetual Explorer.

Rolex founder Hans Wilsdorf. Photo: Rolex

A Rolex Lady-Datejust.

 Rolex watches are highly prized by collectors, which makes them tempting targets for thieves. Photo: Getty Images

Rolex, Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet: why these women watch collectors are wearing men’s timepieces and shrugging off traditional expectations

A Rolex Datejust watch. Women watch collectors are increasingly turning to larger men’s watches when it comes to buying major timepieces. Photo: Shutterstock

Hong Kong-based watch collector Lung Lung Thun recently bought her first vintage Patek Philippe.

Thun started seriously buying watches in 2012.

The Audemars Piguet 34mm Royal Oak is part of the brand’s women’s collections.

POST EDIT: New Rolex Oyster Perpetual Explorer is perfect for adventurers – it can survive some of the most extreme environments

Oyster Perpetual Explorer. Photo: Rolex

The Rolex Oyster Perpetual Explorer watch series is perfect for adventurers and explorers and can survive some of the planet’s most extreme environments. Photo: Rolex

Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay on their climb to the top of Everest. Photo: Alfred Gregory/Royal Geographic Society

A Rolex Oyster Perpetual watch from 1947. Photo: Rolex

The Explorer bears the Superlative Chronometer certification. Photo: Rolex

A close-up on the Oyster Perpetual Explorer dial. Photo: Rolex

Lifestyle

Fashion & Beauty


Rolex makes a million watches a year, and has cornered a quarter of the luxury watch market, but it wasn’t always that way
The strategy to elevate Rolex watches to luxury collectibles stems from a marketing decision made in the 1960s



Rolex made precision watches for adventurers, until it changed its marketing strategy and turned its timepieces into luxury symbols of success and they became collectible.


Rolex

Audemars Piguet

How Rolex became the top luxury watch brand in the world, from its origins as a maker of precision timepieces for professionals and adventurers

Rolex makes a million watches a year, and has cornered a quarter of the luxury watch market, but it wasn’t always that way The strategy to elevate Rolex watches to luxury collectibles stems from a marketing decision made in the 1960s

Rolex makes a million watches a year, and has cornered a quarter of the luxury watch market, but it wasn’t always that way

The strategy to elevate Rolex watches to luxury collectibles stems from a marketing decision made in the 1960s