Watch Week recently ended in Dubai. Those with rank, name and money meet there. Part of the event also includes talk sessions in which experts and insiders exchange ideas about the industry in front of an audience. At one of these forums, Mohammed Seddiqi, owner of the world’s largest Rolex boutique, spoke about the waiting lists in his stores – and actually gave an important signal for those interested in Rolex.
Seddiqi was asked whether he had noticed a decrease in pre-orders for new watches. And indeed, the waiting lists at Dubai’s largest Rolex retailer are gradually emptying, as he explained. “But not much,” he added.
If you look at what he said exactly, the hope of quick success with a boutique may disappear again. “For certain references that maybe 10,000 people were waiting for, we now have 8,000,” Seddiqi revealed.
Anyone who knows the closed industry will still be surprised at so much openness – stern’s inquiries to German jewelers all went unanswered. Seddiqi is known to comment on such questions from time to time.
When the Rolex hype was gaining momentum a few years ago, it was he who limited the prospect of getting a coveted watch by advising people to make an impression with other purchases in his stores before a Rolex lands on the counter . This is not an unusual sales strategy, but very few people talk about it.
Now, says Seddiqi, they are trying to make other watches attractive to customers with hopeless wishes. For him, it’s part of a jeweler’s job. When asked whether he thought the situation was fair, he clearly said no.
Rolex does not provide any information about the situation – now or then. But the fact is that the brand is currently busy building a new factory in Switzerland, which promises at least slightly higher volumes. How many there are currently and will be later is and remains a trade secret.
Nobody knows what rolls off the production lines at Rolex. This means that the accusation of artificial scarcity cannot be dispelled – Rolex repeatedly asserts that it does not hold back any watches. This cannot be proven and some insiders have a different opinion.
There is a way to observe the overall market a little more closely as an outsider. With the so-called Chronopulse, the trading platform “Chrono24” offers a look at the market development for used watches. It not only shows that the prices for older watches only increased noticeably from 2021, but also that they have now fallen by eight percent within a year – for individual models even by up to 15 percent. This could possibly be due, among other things, to current world events and rising inflation. Even if these are mainly used watches, they still reflect purchasing behavior within the industry quite well, at least to some extent.
However, the price trend is not constantly falling – after the market fell significantly at the beginning of the year, the situation has recently calmed down noticeably again despite a persistent, slight negative trend. So there probably won’t be an oversupply that quickly. The days when a new Rolex was easily available to walk-in customers are probably a thing of the past. And used ones are still rarely available for less than new prices.
Sources: Dubai Watch Week
