Sports steel allocations to ADs

[TickTockChuck]

Originally Posted by Oystersteel92

They're in the cat bird seat for sure. With the current state of the market, they can even hold watches in the vault and allocate them as needed based on sales of other goods. Slow month in bridal? Make a few phone calls the last week of the month and make some people happy.

Agreed. Rolex and the ADs probably like the current situation and want to perpetuate it. The only hope for a regular buyer is to find a decent SA who is fair and willing to go to bat for them, plus some good luck. I'm not willing to pay grey prices and am okay with waiting as there are other priorities in life. Rolex has an amazing skill to market its products to create almost unlimited demand.

[gerry100]

Originally Posted by gerry100

Assuming 600 watches a year and an average of $5k margin per unit, the AD enjoys $3 million in margin for a product that sells itself.

Understandable that they would protect this product line and not risk their status to support flippers.

Also understand that smart business would be to leverage this for their total business results.

To be fair, Rolex doesnt sell itself as well when economic conditions sour.

Patience

[bluestreak]

Originally Posted by gerry100

To be fair, Rolex doesnt sell itself as well when economic conditions sour.

Patience

Hoping for a global recession so one can get a luxury watch….

People brains are completely addled by not being able to get a watch.

[cy888]

Some interesting things from this thread,
Every AD is going to be different, and seems stand alone boutiques get more then mixed AD's. That also means more pieces that are not so popular they have to carry and try to sell. Not every piece sells itself, many ladies diamond pieces are slow movers.

[luk4s83]

Rolex makes over 1.2 million watches a year. There’s one caveat, in your calculations you’re forgetting about grey market, there are getting watches from somewhere as well.




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[Devildog]

Originally Posted by luk4s83

Rolex makes over 1.2 million watches a year. There’s one caveat, in your calculations you’re forgetting about grey market, there are getting watches from somewhere as well.




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There is no true "grey market" as far as Rolex is concerned. There are secondary market dealers selling watches originally supplied and sold by ADs.

[luk4s83]

Originally Posted by Devildog

There is no true "grey market" as far as Rolex is concerned. There are secondary market dealers selling watches originally supplied and sold by ADs.

I think you're exactly right! It's ridiculous. It is impossible to get a watch from the AD within a year (if ever at all) and on the same time it takes five minutes to find exactly the same model available online, brand new, with warranty card from the current month. But as long as people will keep feeding "secondary market" scalper dealers this situation will never change.

[Divingdeep87]

Originally Posted by Devildog

There is no true "grey market" as far as Rolex is concerned. There are secondary market dealers selling watches originally supplied and sold by ADs.

Actually mostly supplied by regular people.


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[luk4s83]

Originally Posted by Divingdeep87

Actually mostly supplied by regular people.


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And what's forcing them to keep buying from "regular people"?

[Divingdeep87]

Originally Posted by luk4s83

And what's forcing them to keep buying from "regular people"?

The AD earns money, the customer earns money and the grey dealer earns money. It’s hard to stop. lol.

But yeah for those that can’t get a steel watch, it most be a bit annoying.

[Devildog]

Originally Posted by Divingdeep87

Actually mostly supplied by regular people.


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Agreed - my point was they are all originally sold (to ordinary people) via the AD network

[Chaucer1787]

The 2 ADs I deal with (different states) are both medium-sized, family-owned jewelry stores. Both have just recently undergone Rolex upgrades which also included redoing the entire store.

The manager at the one that just moved to an entirely new location was frank in telling me they get around 300-350 total watches a year - about a dozen or so BLNRs and only 4 BLROs.

The other out-of- state store receives about the same from what I’ve gathered. I only deal with the manager at each of the ADs.


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[PTCDAD]

One of the huge AD’s in Atlanta gets around 3600 a year or around 300 a month. At this location, around 80% of their sales comes from Rolex. Yet, it’s still hard to get SS sports models from them bc their waiting lists are so long.

[MRBolton]

Originally Posted by PTCDAD

One of the huge AD’s in Atlanta gets around 3600 a year or around 300 a month. At this location, around 80% of their sales comes from Rolex. Yet, it’s still hard to get SS sports models from them bc their waiting lists are so long.

That is an obscene number! Selling around 10 a day, when other ADs, granted smaller, are claiming to only get that for the entire week or month.

Not that I don't believe you, but it's just wild how all over the place it is.

[PTCDAD]

Originally Posted by MRBolton

That is an obscene number! Selling around 10 a day, when other ADs, granted smaller, are claiming to only get that for the entire week or month.

Not that I don't believe you, but it's just wild how all over the place it is.

Yeah, I was shocked to hear that number too. I assume the Pareto distribution model (80/20 rule) holds true for ADs. The top 20% of ADs probably sell 80% of the pieces. Rolex seems to be consolidating their AD network too, so larger ADs will get even more in coming years.


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[2loaded]

AD's now have plenty of stock to fill the cases, they choose not to, and we all know why.

[MovieGuy]

I worked at a US AD for almost 20 years from 1998 to 2017. I was the Rolex specialist.
Obviously things have changed in the Rolex world since then but here's what happend at the store where I worked:

Our Rolex rep would come in quarterly, take an inventory of in-stock watches and make suggestions on what to order. We'd place an order for about 25 watches. They'd usually show up 3-5 at a time over the next month. There were different models that we were required to either have in the case or on order for stock. Pretty much all steel Professional watches were in this group along with at least 3 steel and gold Professional models. At least 4 all precious metal models.

We would get about 1 steel Daytona per month, random dial color. We could order as many other Daytonas as we wanted and get them right away.

Other than Daytonas, we could get pretty much as many steel professional watches as we ordered, usually within a month. I remember when I first started working at the store a guy came in and wanted to get 5 steel Submariners for himself, his Dad and his brothers who all ran a business together. We had two in store and were able to get the other three within a couple weeks. Granted, this would have been in the late 90s.

If you have any other questions for me in thsi regard, feel free to ask.

[Calatrava r]

Originally Posted by MovieGuy

I worked at a US AD for almost 20 years from 1998 to 2017. I was the Rolex specialist.
Obviously things have changed in the Rolex world since then but here's what happend at the store where I worked:

Our Rolex rep would come in quarterly, take an inventory of in-stock watches and make suggestions on what to order. We'd place an order for about 25 watches. They'd usually show up 3-5 at a time over the next month. There were different models that we were required to either have in the case or on order for stock. Pretty much all steel Professional watches were in this group along with at least 3 steel and gold Professional models. At least 4 all precious metal models.

We would get about 1 steel Daytona per month, random dial color. We could order as many other Daytonas as we wanted and get them right away.

Other than Daytonas, we could get pretty much as many steel professional watches as we ordered, usually within a month. I remember when I first started working at the store a guy came in and wanted to get 5 steel Submariners for himself, his Dad and his brothers who all ran a business together. We had two in store and were able to get the other three within a couple weeks. Granted, this would have been in the late 90s.

If you have any other questions for me in thsi regard, feel free to ask.

This is what I would think. 100 or more watches a month to an AD sounds unrealistic to me. These watches are currently scarce precisely because not a lot of watches are delivered to ADs relative to the demand. 25 watches a month was a ton to stores years ago when the line was sluggish to sell.

[Jack T]

If, as was stated above, there are 1,400 AD’s world wide, with an average of 2 stores per AD, all sheer conjecture on my part.

Then we have an average of 3 sales associates per store, each seeing 10 customers a week.

Assuming each store operates 48 weeks per year, that means there are 4,032,000 different stories one might hear about how Rolex allocates watches to its retailers.

[Torshalla]

I guess the number of stainless steel sports models that are made / sent to ADs is carefully calculated to secure continued rarity…


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[Harry-57]

Originally Posted by Torshalla

I guess the number of stainless steel sports models that are made / sent to ADs is carefully calculated to secure continued rarity…

The point is that they are not rare. They are mass produced and people are buying, selling and trading them all over the place. Demand for some models at ADs exceeds supply. That's popularity, not rarity.

[bluestreak]

Originally Posted by Harry-57

The point is that they are not rare. They are mass produced and people are buying, selling and trading them all over the place. Demand for some models at ADs exceeds supply. That's popularity, not rarity.

Rarity is relative. It doesn’t have a definition. Whether something is rare or not is subjective.

Scarcity means supply doesn’t meet demand. Which for certainly applies to many Rolex models.

[Harry-57]

Originally Posted by bluestreak

Scarcity means supply doesn’t meet demand. Which for certainly applies to many Rolex models.

The Sky Dweller is an anecdotal case in point. My AD gets one TT Sky Dweller every 12 months or thereabouts, compared to 4-6 SS models. The TT is rare compared to the SS but my AD often has a TT for sale, whereas the lists for the SS models are closed. The same AD gets around twice as many SS blue Sky Dwellers per year than each of the other two SS models. They are queuing around the block for the black and white SS models but they're queuing to the next town for the more plentiful blue model.

[rolesor2022]

Originally Posted by Harry-57

The point is that they are not rare. They are mass produced and people are buying, selling and trading them all over the place. Demand for some models at ADs exceeds supply. That's popularity, not rarity.

The ladies datejust, explorers, subs, etc are not rare. BUT particular models like SS Daytonas, Pepsi are basically rare. Rolex produces ~1m watches a year but out of that number, only ~15,000-~30,000 SS Daytonas are produced a year. That's less than AP ROs

[sgt10p]

It's good.to read from people in the know and not just speculation.

The fact is you can buy any Rolex if you're willing to pay the market price. Rolex have to be complimented in transfering the warranty with the watch. All you have to decide is how much you're willing to pay?

PM model, less than retail, SS more.

[buffetwarren]

The privacy law thing makes no sense. All the big fashion brands take your info. Lots of huge brands do it. Rolex doesn’t because it prefers to have ADs manage the relationships. It’s a winning business model for them, but maybe in the future they look to getting more into the direct to consumer space.

[Harry-57]

Originally Posted by buffetwarren

The privacy law thing makes no sense. All the big fashion brands take your info. Lots of huge brands do it.

In the UK and EU this is illegal. ADs can and do keep customer details on file, just as any other retail business can do unless the customer refuses to allow it. They are not permitted to share this data. It's bound to be different depending on which country/region you reside and shop.

[hartsy]

This is a fascinating thread! Lots of good info

[MarioB83]

Feeling humiliated for an old fashioned time machine made of steel is too far for a grown rational man. Reorganize your mind man

[luk4s83]

Yep, humiliated is not the right word. It's just a watch and I couldn't care less. I'm not going to bribe anyone nor I will buy eleven Tudors to "build a history" and get a Rolex. If they'll offer it to me in a reasonable time I'll buy it and certainly it won't be the last one. If not I will just move on. There's a lot to discover in this hobby. It's just disappointing. One way or another, so far dealing with 3 out of 4 Rolex AD's I've tried was probably the worst customer experience I've ever had. Oh well.