Rolex should follow Apple's lead

[Rolex addict]

Originally Posted by tyler1980

i will never buy an AP again and a big part of it is the brand owned boutique model that they are moving to. I dont want to only buy one brand and i also refuse to build relationships with multiple sales outlets. I dont buy a lot of Rolex but i buy a lot of watches and as a result i got my AD's first BLRO in central london. No way that happens with a brand owned boutique as im not a mono brand purchaser. I would probably not buy another Rolex again.

A bad experience with the brand owned boutique and you get turned off of the brand entirely. Bad experience with an independent AD and you find another AD and your brand experience is not necessarily ruined. So its a lot more pressure on the brand to be customer facing.

Rolex in general is getting off pretty easy with the shortages as the blame is being projected onto AD's who have no control over how many watches they get or when. Why in the world would Rolex want to jump in front of that? Even your post is blaming the AD and implying Rolex could provide you watches, they wouldn't as they want them to be scarce.

Plus in my experience the politics of dealing with the brand directly is far worse than any games AD's play as those are small by comparison. Other brand owned boutiques i know of have flat out said buy a 250k watch to get a SS rare watch and thats the brand saying that, not some AD. They have way more leverage as they are holding all the stock themselves and are not competing with AD's so you can't shop somewhere else if you wanted.

I was pretty much told by an AP boutique that there isn't a snowball's chance in Hell I'll ever get a 15407. Not their exact words, but exactly what they meant. I love a few of their models, but not enough to deal with that.