Rolex Rejects Retail Push Amid Industry Upheaval

Rolex’s chief executive Jean-Frédéric Dufour said the brand has no plans to expand its direct-to-consumer network, even as rivals like Audemars Piguet shift their business rapidly to retail.

Rolex acquired retailer Bucherer in 2023 for an undisclosed sum, fuelling speculation that the world’s biggest watch brand was plotting a shift away from wholesale.

Working with retail partners is “the way Rolex built its success” and is the “model we respect most among all the existing models,” Dufour said Wednesday in an appearance at Dubai Watch Week. The Bucherer deal lifted the brand’s retail exposure, but “we have no intention to go further than that,” he said.

Duffour also called on the luxury watch industry to work together as it works to overcome its current crisis. “We can see the market as a battlefield, but we also need to find a way to collaborate,” the executive said.

“The first way is in education,” he continued, pointing to apprenticeships. “But there is another way, and it is very important that we come together at some points in the year to talk loudly to the world that the watch industry is here and that we make products that last forever and that have a lot of emotion. We need competition, but we also need to be mature enough to be able to collaborate in the right way.”

The Swiss watch industry has been factionalised for years. Current divisions were highlighted when in 2022 a group of brands led by Rolex, Patek Philippe and the Richemont Group (Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, IWC), created Watches and Wonders, a new spring watch fair some competitors refused to join. While LVMH now exhibits at the show through brands such as Bulgari and TAG Heuer, Swatch Group — which counts Omega, Longines and Breguet among its 16 brands—has declined to participate.

Audemars Piguet’s chief executive Ilaria Resta, who was in the audience for Dufour’s appearance along with Patek Philippe chief executive Thierry Stern, has said her company—Switzerland’s fourth largest watchmaker—will join the show for the first time next year.

It’s rare for Rolex’s chief executive to appear in public, but Dufour is becoming more visible. In September, the 57-year-old Swiss was pictured alongside President Trump at the US Open tennis championships. Trump had been invited as a guest of Rolex. Trump’s presence held up play – and put Rolex on the front page of newspapers all over the world.

Earlier this month, Dufour was part of a small delegation of top-level Swiss executives – that also included Johann Rupert, Richemont chairman – that secured an audience in the Oval Office. Dufour gifted Trump a gold desk clock, sending the internet into a spin.

The charm offensive worked. Last week, the US announced tariffs on Swiss imports would be reduced from 39 percent to 15 percent, bringing Switzerland in line with the European Union. The Swiss economy shrank in the third quarter as exports to the US were stymied by the tariff. Swiss news outlet NZZ reported that in both August and September Swiss companies were thought to have paid $300 million to the US treasury as the punitive tax took effect.

While Dufour has remained behind closed doors, Rolex has boomed. As a private company, it does not file financial reports or publish its revenues. Estimates by Morgan Stanley and the Swiss luxury consultancy LuxeConsult in February suggested that in 2024 its revenues hit 10.6 billion Swiss francs ($13.8 billion), making it almost four times larger than Switzerland’s second largest watchmaker Cartier and larger than the rest of the country’s top five watchmakers combined. It’s thought Rolex produces around 1.2 million watches a year, more than 90 percent of which are sold through a global network of third-party retailers and with an average retail price of around 13,000 Swiss francs.

In the UK, Rolex sales, which include those of sister brand Tudor, grew 2.4 percent to £702 million in 2024, a figure that is likely to have further increased since Rolex opened what is thought to be its largest boutique in Europe on Bond Street with the specialist watch retailer Watches of Switzerland earlier this year.

Analysts said Rolex was one of few companies to have ridden out what many in the industry have called “the perfect storm”, with a strong Swiss franc, soaring gold prices, weak consumer demand and US tariffs among a litany of challenges faced by watchmakers over the past two years.

“Rolex will come out of the current crisis stronger,” said Oliver Müller, founder of LuxeConsult. “Looking at the resale values, you understand that the consumer looks at Rolex as a blue chip. When things become more complicated, you stick to the safe values: gold, cash and Rolex.”

Dufour joined Rolex from the LVMH brand Zenith in 2014. During his tenure, Rolex has introduced a pre-owned service that offers Rolex certified and warrantied second-hand watches through retailers such as the Middle East’s Ahmed Seddiqi, Dubai Watch Week’s backers. Dufour said the Rolex Certified Pre-Owned programme had been motivated by an issue in the US. “We noticed in some points of sale that the number one brand was Rolex and the number two was Rolex second-hand, which could be dangerous because we [weren’t offering] a warranty on it,” he said. “The idea [behind Rolex pre-owned] is that we can say we will always take care of you. It’s a long-term commitment. People need to trust what they buy.”

Experts have praised Dufour’s influence. “Under Jean-Frédéric Dufour’s leadership, the company has made decisive strategic moves, from major industrial investments to the launch of the Land-Dweller,” said David Sadigh, chief executive of the Swiss marketing agency Digital Luxury Group, referring to the company’s most recent launch, which was fronted by Roger Federer. “The Bucherer acquisition and the launch of the CPO programme have given Rolex deeper client insights and greater control over the secondary market.”

Unlike many Swiss watch companies, Rolex appears to have survived the advent of the smartwatch unscathed. Swiss watch export volumes have halved since 2015 when the Apple Watch first went on sale, but Dufour said his company had been unaffected. “It damaged the lower end of Swiss watches,” he said. “But at the high end, I don’t see it as a danger.”

Many Swiss brands have lost younger consumers to smartwatches, and Dufour said the industry needed to do more to understand what Gen Z wanted from his country’s watchmakers before it was too late. “We’re driving on the highway at 200km/h in the fog,” he said. “This is what makes our industry super complicated.”

Rolex is expected to continue to lead the market. “From what we’re seeing in our LuxuryIQ data, Rolex has never been as dominant,” said Sadigh, referring to his company’s luxury marketing intelligence. “The brand is highly desirable across generations, with refreshed communication and sustained demand.”

As for Dufour? “I don’t think Dufour will step down any time soon, but neither will he work until he’s 75,” said Müller. “But that makes for another decade of growth.”