Rolex Should Let ADs Markup New Stock

[superspectral]

We have suffered through years of hand wringing over no stock at ADs, murky or non existent waiting lists, and suspicions that many ADs are involved in back channel deals to flippers.

Rolex can’t and probably wouldn’t increase production enough to make a dent in any of these problems.

One can imagine a lot of complex schemes to cut fluppers and grey dealers out, but these seem likely only to reduce supply.

If every AD was allowed to charge any price for any piece, this would actually vastly increase the number of pieces available at market price. So for example, if greys have 800 available $15k new in box subs each day now-that might triple to 2400 in the expanded market . I expect average prices would drop a few $1k after some instability.

Customers have the ability to buy truly new watches with less waiting and a lot more transparency. The AD should be able to sell at a premium over used. This doesn’t really hurt used dealers business model of buying like and sellling high.

I hardly see how new customers would be more pissed off at markups than zero stock and 5 year waiting lists.