Rolex (Audio)

1. BGBen Gilbert0:00

   All right, David, what's on your wrist?

2. DRDavid Rosenthal0:02

   Well, currently on the wrist is my stainless white face Daytona that my dad gave me. I think it was still quite popular when he gave it to me, probably close to fifteen years ago, but not like it is today.

3. BGBen Gilbert0:14

   A strong choice. I'm actually also wearing a Daytona that I am borrowing from a good friend of the show.

4. DRDavid Rosenthal0:20

   Mm, love it!

5. BGBen Gilbert0:21

   Well, fun fact for our listeners, the watch that David is wearing is the one that I was wearing during the Morris Chang interview when we wanted to foreshadow that this was our next episode.

6. DRDavid Rosenthal0:32

   Yes, and in front of me here now, in my hand, but not on my wrist, is my other Rolex that my dad gave me a long time ago, my Rolesor Datejust.

7. BGBen Gilbert0:41

   Dude, you gotta go one on each wrist.

8. DRDavid Rosenthal0:43

   You got it. [laughing] Great.

9. BGBen Gilbert0:46

   All right.

10. SPSpeaker0:46

    Who got the truth? Is it you? Is it you? Is it you? Who got the truth now? Is it you? Is it you? Is it you? Sit me down, say it straight, another story on the way. Who got the truth?

11. BGBen Gilbert1:03

    Welcome to the Spring twenty twenty-five season of Acquired, the podcast about great companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert.

12. DRDavid Rosenthal1:11

    I'm David Rosenthal.

13. BGBen Gilbert1:12

    And we are your hosts. All you need for timekeeping is something that happens at a constant rate and some way to count it. It could be sand in an hourglass. It could be a weight being pulled down by gravity on a grandfather clock, slowly turning the hands, moderated by the tick-tock of a pendulum. Or it could be a mechanical watch on your wrist, driven by a complex and beautiful array of hundreds of gears and springs. Today, listeners, we tell you the story that we can't believe we haven't already told on Acquired, Rolex.

14. DRDavid Rosenthal1:49

    Ooh.

15. BGBen Gilbert1:49

    Rolex is a cascade of paradoxes. It's one of the best-known brands in the world, but despite that, it's one of the least known companies in the world. They're privately held by a charitable foundation, the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation, so they don't have to disclose anything, and really, they never do. They're one of the most secretive companies that we have ever studied, and David, check me on this, I think they're even more secretive than IKEA or Mars.

16. DRDavid Rosenthal2:14

    Oh, yeah. It's funny that the closer to the present day we get, the less we know. [laughing]

17. BGBen Gilbert2:19

    Totally! They operate like an intelligence agency over there.

18. DRDavid Rosenthal2:22

    Yes, like James Bond, one might say.

19. BGBen Gilbert2:24

    Oh, or one might not say.

20. DRDavid Rosenthal2:27

    [laughing]

21. BGBen Gilbert2:28

    Listeners, they make watches that everyone wants to buy, but nobody seems to be able to get, with famously long and opaque lists at retailers. Except, of course, over a million people a year actually do buy one, and for an average price of thirteen thousand dollars each. That is, until you walk out of the store, and then they instantly become worth more, at least for a lot of the models these days.

22. DRDavid Rosenthal2:53

    To your point about paradoxes of Rolex, this is one of the greatest ones. It is absolutely one of the very, very top, top-tier luxury brands in the world, and yet they also sell a lot of units. Hermès doesn't sell a million Birkins every year.

23. BGBen Gilbert3:07

    There's probably ten times more Rolexes sold than Birkins sold, or at least on that order. It's a success built on the back of craftsmanship, engineering, and manufacturing, honed and perfected over a hundred and twenty years. It is one of the greatest brands in the world, built meticulously and so intentionally, David. And my favorite part of the paradox: this is the story of the most successful Swiss watch company, but it wasn't founded in Switzerland or even by a Swiss person. [laughing]

24. DRDavid Rosenthal3:35

    No, no, it was not.

25. BGBen Gilbert3:37

    It's a ten-plus billion dollar revenue business performing a dead craft obsoleted by the digital world. They make a watch that can't tell the time as good as my Apple Watch, or even a ten-dollar Casio, for that matter. So what is going on here? How did Rolex become Rolex? This is a story we've been giddy to share.

26. DRDavid Rosenthal3:56

    Oh, so excited.

27. BGBen Gilbert3:57

    Well, one big disclaimer up front, much like how our NFL episode wasn't about football and our NBA episode wasn't about basketball, this episode isn't really about watches. It's about the business of watches.

28. DRDavid Rosenthal4:09

    Yes.

29. BGBen Gilbert4:10

    If you wanna know every time an episode drops, check out our email list. It is the only place where we will share a hint of what our next episode will be, and we'll share corrections, updates, and little tidbits that we learn from previous episodes. That's acquired.fm/email, or click the link in the show notes. Join the Slack. Come talk to us about this episode with the whole Acquired community afterwards, acquired.fm/slack. And if you want more Acquired between monthly episodes, check out ACQ2, our interview show, where we talk to founders, CEOs, and investors who are building businesses in areas that we've covered on the show. The most recent one was a very fun interview we did with a friend of the show, Guillermo Rauch, the founder and CEO of Vercel, about really the whole history of web development frameworks and their latest and greatest product, v0, a startup within a startup that lets you code web apps from scratch in just English instead of a programming language.

30. DRDavid Rosenthal5:06

    Yes.

Episode duration: 5:00:34