Rolex

salmosalar
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Good article...

I have read this and the article in the Pittsburgh, PA newspaper that makes many of the same points.

I gather from both these articles that;

1- Swiss watch exports are down by a double digit number...this must be hurting large and small makers alike.

2- It appears that ROLEX and others were caught flat-footed when the global economic decline began. Adding production capacity at this time may require ROLEX to increase sales in a tight market....that is going to be a tough row to hoe.

3- The ROLEX aversion to discounting may soon be a thing of the past.  ROLEX may have to get down in the trenches and slug it out in a price war as recent discounting proves to be become more and more widespread on the high end watches. 

4- The purported losses due to the Madoff scandal seem to bother many ROLEX owners.  I have read on other blogs that some simply dismiss it out of hand. The deniers claim that ROLEX is too well run to make this error. I say ROLEX is run by human beings just like you and I and just as prone to errors as we are. Denial does no one any good.  If it is true, admit and get it behind you.

5- Pricing in this difficult global economy is a gordian knot at best.  What bold stroke will work?  Price increases often lead to customers staying away. This then leads to ADs sloughing new higher priced unsold units into the gray market.  The gray marketers in turn lower prices to move them off their stocklists.  And this leads to more and more people expecting a good discount from their retailer as they read about discounting on the blogs. I suggest that in the next few years ROLEX may actually cut prices or go to an internet based pricing/AD structure.  Either way if they want to sell 900,000 units a year a year in the shaky global economy I don't think the current AD system and pricing structure will work.

6- ROLEX probably has the resources to weather this storm, after all they survived the '30s depression.  But in order to survive and prosper I think they must rethink their whole approach, pricing, ADs, consumer care and so forth.

7- An example close to ROLEX would be their TUDOR division.  Better pricing, superlative website and beautiful catalog. The ROLEX  website does not work half the time, their "catalog" is an insult to the marque.  They can do better, and TUDOR proves it

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