Rolex Now Has a Resale Program. The Watch World Quakes.

(nytimes.com) - There is a saying in the high-end watch trade that there are only two kinds of watchmakers: Rolex and everyone else. The privately owned, Geneva-based brand dominates the industry by virtually every measure, although many of these comparisons are based on estimates, as a result of Rolex’s well-known reluctance to share information. In 2021, the company’s sales were estimated to total 8 billion Swiss francs ($8.56 billion), accounting for 28.8 percent of the global watch market’s retail value — up from 26.8 percent in 2020 and 24.6 percent in 2019 — according to a Morgan Stanley report released in March, the most recent information available. To put that 28.8 percent in perspective, the report estimated Rolex’s market share as equal to that of the next five brands combined. Rolex is an even bigger juggernaut in secondary channels, where its pre-owned watches often fetch twice their retail value, and sometimes far more. (Many watch insiders cite the 2017 auction of Paul Newman’s Rolex Daytona for $17.8 million as the start of the current mania for collectible timepieces.) All this goes a long way toward explaining the seismic shift in the global watch trade that occurred on Dec. 1, when Rolex announced it was introducing a certified pre-owned (C.P.O.) program for secondhand Rolex watches that have been inspected, refurbished and met the company’s minimum standards. The brand did not respond to a request for comment.