Rolex Comments on the “Shortage Strategy” on its Products
This past week was inevitably marked not only by some important releases in the watchmaking world, but also by the buzz that provoked Rolex’s statements about its production and distribution chain in the face of a report by Yahoo Finance a few weeks ago, which if you would like to read more about, we left the link here, where you wondered why it is almost impossible to purchase some of the Rolex models, namely the Daytona, Submariner, and GMT-Masters, suggesting at some point that there was a strategy on the part of the brand to raise the prices of these models, namely in the secondary market.
If these kinds of “suggestions” aren’t new over the years, the fact that Rolex now responds to justify itself is completely new. Let’s now transcribe the brand response below.
“The scarcity of our products is not a strategy on our part. Our current production cannot meet the existing demand in an exhaustive way, at least not without reducing the quality of our watches – something we refuse to do as the quality of our products must never be compromised. This level of excellence requires time, and as we have always done, we will continue to take the necessary time to ensure that all our watches not only comply with our standards of excellence, but also meet the expectations of our customers in terms of quality, reliability and robustness. Rolex does not compromise on what it takes to produce exceptional watches.
All Rolex watches are developed and produced in-house at our four sites in Switzerland. They are assembled by hand, with extreme care, to meet the brand’s unique and high-quality standards of quality, performance and aesthetics. Understandably, this naturally restricts our production capacities – which we continue to increase as much as possible and always according to our quality criteria.
Finally, it should be noted that Rolex watches are available exclusively from official retailers, who independently manage the allocation of watches to customers.”
Briefly, we can conclude that Rolex claims that in recent years it has been making an effort to increase production in order to meet demand, but that it will never compromise the production quality of its products just to be able to produce more, as any other company has limited resources, it also states that considering the possibility of increasing these resources, namely highly specialized human resources would have an impact on the price, making them rise, a strategy that it does not intend to follow. Finally, it implies that it does not control the way its official retailers distribute the watches to their customers, implying between the lines that there may be some less ethical behavior on the part of some of them in the form of making available certain models of the brand.
We will not express any opinion on this matter or on the brand statements, we have our opinion and do not intend to feed this discussion, so it is up to each of us to take our own conclusions.
