David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…In 1985, it was interestingly capital structure. Why did Omega do dumb stuff and Rolex didn’t? That doesn’t really fit into this framework. That’s not about strategy, that’s about tactics. That’s a failure of execution to make the wrong decision. I think maybe the more interesting question is, rewind back to the lifestyle era, post–World War II when they’re launching all the professional watches, the sport watches. Was that counter positioning versus the rest of the industry? I don’t think so, because I don’t think they were doing anything that the rest of the industry couldn’t. They were executing really well on a brand strategy that was really cohesive with their product strategy around the professional watches. But I don’t know that their competitors couldn’t do that. There was some structural reason why they couldn’t. Quartz was counter positioned against Switzerland, but I don’t think Rolex was counter positioned against other Swiss. I think it was tactics.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.