Think of everyone who wears a Rolex: your ex-wife's lawyer, your boss,
your boss's boss.
The luxury watch brand is a magnet for people with too much money,
a need for social validation or just regular collectors
who appreciate the watches for what they really are:
exquisite pieces of art, not symbols of wealth or power.
For most people owning a Rolex is like checking off the first item on
their how to be a rich guy list, but having a luxury watch for such a reason is
really missing the point.
that small tick-tocking device on your wrist carries with it over a hundred years of
history, and in this video we'll see just how deep the rabbit-hole goes.
The company Rolex is really the brainchild of one German orphan: Hans Wilsdorf.
Having lost his parents at the age of 12, he was sent to a boarding school in
Coburg by his aunt and uncle.
There Hans learned to speak English and he was so good at it that after he
graduated he got a job as a translator at a firm in Switzerland. The firm's name
was Cuno Korten and it was one of the biggest watch exporters in Switzerland
at the time. While working there Hans was exposed to some of the most
influential people in watchmaking.
One such acquaintance was Hermann Aegler, who had recently inherited a large
ébauche factory after his father's death.
Ébauche is a French word and it refers to the unassembled components of a watch
mechanism. With his newfound friends in high places Hans decided to move to
England and in 1905 he founded his own company called Wilsdorf and Davis.
Davis was the name of Hans' brother-in-law who had lent money to
finance the whole thing. Hans' first order of business was to get watches
that he could sell. Now wristwatches weren't very popular at the time:
they were flimsy, accurate and worn mostly by women. People of the higher
class preferred pocket watches, which were seen as durable and would often be
passed down generations. Hans saw a lot of potential in wristwatches and so he got in
touch with his friend Hermann Aegler. Aegler's factory would produce high-quality
wristwatches and Hans would import them to England, where he would sell them to
local retailers. Wilsdorf and Davis was pretty successful early on
mostly due to the higher quality of their Swiss-made mechanisms. Hans had a
good sense for marketing though, and he quickly realized the importance of brand
recognition. He wanted people to associate their watches with his company
not the retailers' and so in 1908 he registered his own brand name:
Rolex. The name was short and easy to remember, and so Hans started printing it
on the dials of all his watches. To give the Rolex name some credibility Hans
decided to contact two time keeping institutes: in 1910 Rolex was awarded the
Swiss certificate of chronometric precision, and a 1914 Rolex became the
first wristwatches in history to receive a Class "A" Precision rating
by the Kew Observatory in London.
The real catalyst for Rolex' popularity, however, was World War One
Soldiers at the time didn't have wrist watches in their standard equipment.
As you can imagine carrying around a pocket watch was pretty inconvenient,
and Rolex ended up being a favorite among the military. The war popularized the
brand name for its quality and durability, but it wasn't all sunshine
and rainbows.
The British government imposed a wartime import duty of 33% on
all luxury goods, including watches. This hit Hans' business very hard and so in
1919 he moved his company to Geneva where he incorporated it as Montres Rolex.
The focal point of the new company was evolution,
and having already popularized wrist watches, Rolex tackled the next big challenge:
making them waterproof. Now waterproof watches had actually been around for a
long time. The earliest confirmed model dates back to 1851. They were always
custom-built, however, and had never been a commercial success
Rolex changed that when they released their Oyster model in 1926.
The making of the Oyster, or any waterproof watch for that matter, really boils down
to two things: making the case hermetically sealed and preventing the
crown from unsealing it.
The crown by the way is that small pin on the side of the watch that lets you
the time. Back in Switzerland Aegler' engineers found a way to fix both problems.
They also invented the self-winding mechanism in 1931. Prior to that you
had to wind your clock every day using the crown or it would stop working.
Hans Wilsdorf, being the marketing genius that he was, decided to promote the Oyster
by giving it to a young girl named Mercedes Gleitze
She became the first woman to swim across the English Channel in 1927,
but when people started doubting her achievement, she decided to make the swim again.
She almost made it the second time, but in the end the Coast Guard had to pull her
out of the water barely seven miles from the other shore.
She was still wearing her Oyster and it had perfectly tracked her swim down to the
minute. It was an enormous marketing victory for Rolex and they used this
event for advertisement well into the 1950s.
This was the first time celebrity testimony was used to promote a watch,
but Rolex didn't stop there.
Lord Clydesdale became the first man to fly over Everest in 1933. He was wearing
a Rolex. Malcolm Campbell became the first man to reach a speed of 300 miles
per hour on land in 1935. He was also wearing a Rolex.
The Trieste became the first manned vessel to reach the bottom of the Mariana
Trench in 1960. It had a Rolex attached to its outside surface
The list goes on and on and it shows just how good Hans Wilsdorf was
at maintaining his brand.
He also wanted to expand his company's client base and so he created the Tudor
brand in 1946. Tudor watches are pretty close to Rolexes in terms of reliability,
but they're less expensive and are generally marketed to the upper middle
class. Hans Wilsdorf's death in 1960 marked the end of an era
for Rolex. The ownership of the company was transferred to the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation,
which still owns it to this day and uses its income for charity.
Hans' death couldn't have come at a worse time, since the late 1960s and
the early 1970s were the beginning of the Quartz Revolution. The invention of quartz clocks,
you know, the ones that run on batteries, was a devastating blow to the Swiss watch market.
Cheap quartz watches from Japan and the US flooded the global marketplace and
by the end of 1983 two out of every three Swiss watchmakers
had gone bankrupt. Mechanical watches couldn't compete with the low weight and
high precision of their quartz counterparts and so most of them fell out of favor.
Rolex managed to survive the Quartz Revolution by relying on its brand and reputation.
It didn't matter if a mechanical Rolex was less accurate. The amount of effort put
into creating and assembling the Rolex, most of which is done by hand by the way,
gives it a collectible value that no mass produced quartz watch will ever have.
The time it takes to produce a single Rolex is over a year
and unlike most companies Rolex doesn't outsource any of its production. Quality
is everything to them, and when you look at some of their recent models it's hard
not to think of them as works of art.
Hell, I'd buy one just to put it in a frame if it wouldn't cost me a kidney.
Even today Rolex is the biggest watch producer in Switzerland, and although
they account for only 1% of all watch sales across the world,
they represent 1/4 of the global market's value. They're the official
timekeeper for two of the four Grand Slams,
two of the four golf majors, the Formula One championship and the 24 Hour Le Mans race.
It's truly impressive how Rolex has managed to stay on top of the luxury
watch industry for over a century.
They've become more than just expensive watches: they're a symbol of wealth for
both self-entitled rich kids and powerful men alike.
I hope you enjoyed a Rolex' story. If you did hit that like button and check out
my other videos for the stories of more cool companies.
Tell me in the comments below which company you'd like me to feature next
and as always: stay smart.