What time is now, Rolex?

What time is now, Rolex? Welcome to its Kingdom of Luxury Watches

October 28, 2015

What time is now, Rolex? Welcome to its Kingdom of Luxury Watches ⇒ Rolex is definitely something more than just the watch kingdom of richness. The luxury magazine CovetED decided to gather all necessary information about this luxury brand, starting from history and finishing with a variety of models Rolex created until today.

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Rolex SA and its subsidiary Montres Tudor SA design, manufacture, distribute and service wristwatches sold under the Rolex and Tudor brands. Founded by Alfred Davis and Hans Wilsdorf in London, England in 1905 as Wilsdorf and Davis, Rolex moved its base of operations to Geneva, Switzerland in 1919.

Forbes ranked the luxury watches brand Rolex No.72 on its 2014 list of the world’s most powerful global brands. Rolex is the largest single luxury watch brand, producing about 2,000 watches per day, with estimated 2012 revenues of US$7.7 billion.

Alfred Davis and his brother-in-law Hans Wilsdorf founded Wilsdorf and Davis, the company that would eventually become Rolex SA, in London, England in 1905. Wilsdorf and Davis’ main commercial activity at the time involved importing Hermann Aegler’s Swiss movements to England and placing them in high-quality watch cases made by Dennison and others. These early wristwatches were sold to jewellers, who then put their own names on the dial. The earliest watches from Wilsdorf and Davis were usually hallmarked “W&D” inside the caseback.

In 1908 Wilsdorf registered the trademark “Rolex” and opened an office in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. The company name “Rolex” was registered on 15 November 1915. The book The Best of Time: Rolex Wristwatches: An Unauthorized History by Jeffrey P. Hess and James Dowling says that the name was just made up. One story, never confirmed by Wilsdorf, recounts that the name came from the French phrasehorlogerie exquise, meaning “exquisite clockwork” or as a contraction of “horological excellence”. Wilsdorf was said to want his watch brand’s name to be easily pronounceable in any language. He also thought that the name “Rolex” was onomatopoeic, sounding like a watch being wound. It is easily pronounceable in many languages and, as all its upper-case letters have the same size, can be written symmetrically. It was also short enough to fit on the face of a watch.

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In 1914 Kew Observatory awarded a Rolex watch a Class A precision certificate, a distinction normally granted exclusively to marine chronometers.

In 1919 Wilsdorf left England due to wartime taxes levied on luxury imports as well as to export duties on the silver and gold used for the watch cases driving costs too high and moved the company to Geneva, Switzerland, where it was established as the Rolex Watch Company. Its name was later changed to Montres Rolex, SA and finally Rolex, SA. Upon the death of his wife in 1944, Wilsdorf established the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation in which he left all of his Rolex shares, making sure that some of the company’s income would go to charity. As of 2006, a private trust owned the company, with no shares traded on any stock exchange.

In December 2008, following the abrupt departure of Chief Executive Patrick Heiniger for “personal reasons”, the company denied that it had lost 1 billion Swiss francs (approx £574 million, $900 million) invested with Bernard Madoff, the American asset manager who pleaded guilty to an approximately £30 billion worldwide Ponzi scheme fraud. Rolex SA announced Heiniger’s death on 5 March 2013. As of 2010 Rolex watches continue to have a reputation as status symbols.

Automatic movements

The first self-winding Rolex wristwatch was offered to the public in 1931 (so-called the “bubbleback” due to the large caseback), preceded to the market by Harwood which patented the design in 1923 and produced the first self-winding watch in 1928, powered by an internal mechanism that used the movement of the wearer’s arm. This not only made watch-winding unnecessary, but kept the power from the mainspring more consistent resulting in more reliable time keeping.

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Quartz movements

Rolex participated in the development of the original quartz watch movements. Although Rolex has made very few quartz models for its Oyster line, the company’s engineers were instrumental in design and implementation of the technology during the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1968, Rolex collaborated with a consortium of 16 Swiss watch manufacturers to develop the Beta 21 quartz movement used in their Rolex Quartz Date 5100. Alongside other manufactures including the Omega Electroquartz watches. Within about five years of research, design, and development, Rolex created the “clean-slate” 5035/5055 movement that would eventually power the Rolex Oysterquartz.

Water-resistant cases

Rolex was also the first watch company to create a water resistant wristwatch that could withstand pressure to a depth of 100 m (330 ft). Wilsdorf even had a specially made Rolex watch (the watch was called the “DeepSea”) attached to the side of the Trieste, which went to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. The watch survived and tested as having kept perfect time during its descent and ascent. This was confirmed by a telegram sent to Rolex the following day saying “Am happy to confirm that even at 11,000 metres your watch is as precise as on the surface. Best regards, Jacques Piccard”.

Collections

Rolex produced specific models suitable for the extremes of deep-sea diving, caving, mountain climbing, polar exploration, and aviation. Early sports models included the Rolex Submariner (1953) and the Rolex Oyster Perpetual Date Sea Dweller. The latter watch has a helium release valve, co-invented with Swiss watchmaker Doxa, to release helium gas build-up during decompression. The Explorer (1953) and Explorer II (1971) were developed specifically for explorers who would navigate rough terrain, such as the world famous Mount Everest expeditions. Another iconic model is the Rolex GMT Master (1954), originally developed at the request of Pan Am Airways to provide its crews with a dual time watch that could be used to display GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), which is the international time standard for aviation and was needed for Astronavigation during longer flights.

Certified chronometers

Rolex is the largest manufacturer of Swiss made certified chronometers. In 2005, more than half the annual production of COSC certified watches were Rolexes. To date, Rolex still holds the record for the most certified chronometer movements in the category of wristwatches.

Ceramic bezels

The company has ceramic bezels across the range of professional sports watches. They are available on the Submariner, Sea Dweller-Deepsea, GMT Master II and Daytona models. The ceramic bezel is not influenced by UV-light and is very scratch resistant.

Rolex SA offers products under the Rolex and Tudor brands

Montres Tudor SA has designed, manufactured and marketed Tudor watches since 6 March 1946. Rolex founder Hans Wildorf conceived of the Tudor Watch Company to create a product for authorized Rolex dealers to sell that offered the reliability and dependability of a Rolex, but at a lower price.

Tudor watches are manufactured by Montres Tudor SA using movements supplied by ETA SA. They are marketed and sold in most countries around the world including the United States, Australia, Canada, India, Mexico, South Africa, many countries in Europe, South Asia, the Middle East and countries in South America, particularly Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela.

Montres Tudor SA discontinued sales of Tudor-branded watches in the United States in 2004, but Tudor returned to the United States market in the summer of 2013 and to the UK in 2014.

Rolex has three watch lines: Oyster Perpetual, Professional and Cellini (the Cellini line is Rolex’s line of ‘dressy’ watches). The primary bracelets for the Oyster line are named Jubilee, Oyster and President.