David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…That is my opinion. It’s arguably not even a craft product. It’s an exceptionally well-made industrial product with exquisite engineering and amazing branding. But the luxury world of watches, it’s Audemars Piguet, it’s Patek Philippe. These watches sell for 8, 10, 30 times as much as Rolex watches, and they produce way fewer of them. Rolex is an industrial engineered, beautiful, consistent, reliable product. It’s not art or complications or fashion. It’s mass. This thing sells 1,000,001–1,000,002 products a year. I agree with you. I think maybe our definitions of a luxury company are different. If you were to define a luxury company as the most expensive, highest end items, yes totally agree. That is not Rolex. That is Patek, that is some of the other low volume companies. The reason I think that Rolex is a luxury company extraordinaire is managing the market as opposed to participating in it. To me, that’s what Hermès does better than anybody else out there. They manage the market. They’re in control.…

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