Rolex's Manufacturing Facilities (2015)

https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/inside-rolex

by stevekemp • 5 years ago

48 53 5 years ago

Cool article, but they're still overpriced.

TwoBit• 5 years ago

Given that mechanical watches are not bought for their ability to report time, how do you even say what it's worth? It's really a work of technical art.

Fezzik• 5 years ago

Given that the technical artistry is the same as it is in numerous other fine watches, it should be relatively easy to calculate how many extra dollars a person is paying to have ‘Rolex’ stamped on the timepiece... and methinks it is a rather hefty markup.

Dave_Rosenthal• 5 years ago

Well, I guess that the fact that China can produce high-end Rolex knockoffs that are all but indistinguishable from the real thing for 5-10% the price gives you one datapoint about what it’s worth. Of course that’s with no design or marketing costs, cheaper labor, and a lot less quality control.

nullifidian4• 5 years ago

More akin to TF2 Hats or CS:GO knives -- expensive, limited supply, status symbol with practicality approaching zero. Also look nice, but so are cheap Seikos, or cheap CS:GO skins.

dmitriid• 5 years ago

Rolex produces 800 000 to a million watches a year. It's not a piece of art. It's a mass-production assembly line for high quality luxury products.

speedgoose• 5 years ago

Being overpriced and out of reach for many people is one of the main point of a Rolex.

lmz2• 5 years ago

It's amusing to see this downvoted when it definitely is true. Multiple years[1] of waiting for a basic steel model?

[1] https://www.watchmaster.com/en/journal/news-en/rolex-waiting...

ramraj07• 5 years ago

It used to be the everyman's watch though.

lozf• 5 years ago

As the saying goes; "You don't buy a Rolex to tell the time, you buy a Rolex to tell others".

JohnBooty10• 5 years ago

    We are shuffled into a secure room – we are about to see 
    the legendary Rolex automated stock system. Our guide 
    places his eyes to the iris scanner (no lie) the doors 
    slide open, and what we see is downright startling. 
    
    [...]
    
    There are two 12,000 cubic meter vaults, spliced by a 
    network of rails totaling 1.5 kilometers, transporting 
    over 2,800 trays of components per hour between the 60,000 
    storage compartments and the workshops upstairs. 
    The view is straight out of Star Wars, minus the 1970s camp. 
    This is efficiency defined.

Not your everyday company.

Even if you're not particularly into watches, Rolex is a really neat example of a suuuuuper vertically integrated company. They even make their own steel! Necessary? Probably not; I'm not aware that they actually accomplish some sort of magic metallurgy. But, that's no ordinary company.

In terms of things the average person can afford... if this kind of thing actually appeals to you but you can't imagine spending Rolex money...

Seiko comes close and arguably exceeds even Rolex in terms of history, innovation, and vertical integration. It's one reason why Seiko is a favorite of many in the hobby. Why does this matter? Well, for many, it's simply neat to know that every single piece of the tiny little miracle machine on your wrist came from a single slightly secretive company.

Timekeeping in general, and mechanical watches in particular, are a fascinating and vital part of human history.

(And as wristwatches are something of a solved problem, they're appealing to me on that level after fighting with the framework of the week at my day job.)

underlines2• 5 years ago

If you really want one, then Rolex are not that expensive. Get a certified second hand Rolex. But there are so many affordable Swiss watch brands. My father bought me a Certina for 200USD 15 years ago. My girlfriend bought me an automatic Tissot. The cheapest automatic Tissot is around 700USD new and you can get second hand options for 100 USD.

Immortal333• 5 years ago

>> The cheapest automatic Tissot is around 700USD.

Is the engineering/logistics behind Mechanical watches really costlier than Oneplus phones ?

Veen3• 5 years ago

The cheapest automatic Tissot is around 700USD

I'd like to second your Tissot recommendation. They're excellent quality for the price. I'm not a watch collector, but I am very fond of my Tissot Visodate, which replaced an Apple Watch that I found to be largely useless and quite annoying to wear.

stevekemp2• 5 years ago

If you want a nice reliable, automatic, watch you don't even need a swiss maker.

There are a great number of manufacturers with a long histories of watch-making, for example Vostok from Russian, and Laco from Germany. (I have a couple of Vostok "dive" watches, which cost about €60 each, as well as a nice Laco pilot-watch for around €300). You could even go Japanese with companies like Orient.

Animats• 5 years ago

If you want to see the "super secret legendary automated stock system", here it is.[1] It's an ordinary high-bay automated storage and retrieval system.

Watch companies making their own steel is not a new thing. At least for balance wheel springs.

Here's one of those classic Jam Handy films about watch mechanisms, made for the Hamilton Watch Company.[2]

[1] http://rolexpassionreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/rpr...

[2] https://archive.org/details/HowaWatc1949

computator• 5 years ago

If you want to see the "super secret legendary automated stock system", here it is.

That same photo also appears in the original article where it explains that it is not the “super secret” one from the Rolex Plan-les-Ouates location but the Bienne location’s “pared-down” version of the stocking system.

retSava• 5 years ago

I assume lots of it comes down to storytelling and marketing, to be honest. "No-one makes steel good enough for us!" (there most likely is, and cheaper, and likely better)

I hope I don't sound dismissive, nor do I not want to hold anyone from a nice hobby, but also, the timepiece hobby wouldn't really be what it is _without_ the storytelling.

JohnBooty10• 5 years ago

Dismiss away! In case you can't tell from my post I'm not a Rolex guy and I wouldn't be, even if I had the money, which I certainly do not.

But, it's always fascinating to me to see how they do things.

As an engineer, I really appreciate that level of engineering excellence. In a world where nearly everything is so ruthlessly cost-cut, it's kind of nice just to see excess on the technical side.

Maybe that's why I love reading about it. I'm a software engineer, and I literally do not have enough hours in a day to do my job. All I do is cut corners and I seldom love the result.

coldtea3• 5 years ago

They even make their own steel! Necessary? Probably not;

No, but helps give some allure to the process, to justify the 500%+ markup.

(I appreciate craftmanship of the Hatori Hanzo variety. But Rolex is crass commercialism with ridiculus markups and "faux" legacy).

JohnBooty10• 5 years ago

It's utterly crass.

However, their insane markups enable some serious engineering (please forgive the term) "porn."

As a software engineer I do nothing but cut corners all day. While I do not desire to own a Rolex, I love these glimpses into their utterly surrealistic world of engineering excess.

trabant00• 5 years ago

Slightly offtopic warning from an addict: do not start looking into watches. Especially mechanical ones. Their beauty combined with their flaws puts people on the never ending, wallet destroying quest for the holy grail. And the diminishing returns from jumping from a "budget" watch of 3-500$ to a "nice" one of 2-3000$ are ridiculously small.

Collecting mechanical watches is especially bad in these last couple of years because the prices have gone up by a lot with little to none technical advances to back it up. It looks to me like a ponzi scheme supported by the watch media (hodinkee in particular [0]) as they try to push watches as a sort of investment - which they are not it you actually wear them. The manufacturers put out one overpriced limited edition after another where the only thing that changes is the color scheme.

There's a lot to talk about and I'm sure I didn't do a good job of presenting my case in such a short post, but at least keep this warning in the back of your head.

[0] https://thetruthaboutwatches.com/2020/12/ben-clymer-hodinkee...

k_sze2• 5 years ago

What I do is I make a list of vintage grail watches that I'm interested in, and I limit myself to those and stop looking at other ones. (Same thing with fountain pens.)

Right now these are missing from my collection:

- Seiko SCVF-009 "Red Alpinist" with green dial - I already have the cream dial (SCVF-007) and the black dial (SCVF-005) counterparts.

- Citizen 67-9356 Octagon chronograph, in both white dial and black dial configurations; I find this one interesting because it was like the only inexpensive hi-beat (28,800 bph) chronograph, complete with day-date and flyback mechanism, ever produced in the history of Japanese watch-making.

- Grand Seiko 6186-8000 VFA, in both blue-dial-and-long-hands, and white-dial-and-short-hands configurations. A ridiculously accurate Grand Seiko with a dial design that (I find) really stands the tests of time. Legend has it that the Seikos performed so well that the Swiss eventually gave up inviting them to the chronometer competition (because Seikos kept coming out at the top). I consider this model the pinnacle before Seiko resorted to "cheating" with the SpringDrive.

Curiously, I'm not really interested in Swiss watches.

coldtea3• 5 years ago

Curiously, I'm not really interested in Swiss watches.

I think having a list of "vintage grail watches" you just "need to have" is more curious than that :)

Faaak• 5 years ago

My two and only mechanical watches are Seiko ones, worth 50$ on amazon. They're so cheap yet so good compared to a digital one.

And indeed, you can easily fall into this trap of buying a never-good-enough better one.

aikinai• 5 years ago

Honest question, what’s “so good” compares to non-mechanical watches?

By “digital,” I assume you really mean quartz?

stevekemp2• 5 years ago

People can become addicted to anything, I think being addicted to buying watches has got to be a less common than shoes, cameras/lenses, handbags, sneakers, or even sunglasses!

In some ways you're right, there are brands out there that put out short-lived special editions. But equally there are a lot of cheap and readily available pieces which are becoming much more well-known and accessible.

All my watches have been bought used, and if ever I reach a point where one of them no longer makes me smile when I look at it then it will be resold. Sometimes watches appreciate in value, but it is a gamble and I think suggesting somebody buy a watch as an investment has got to be bad advice almost 100% of the time. If they go up, great? If they go down? Well if you enjoyed it for the time you owned it that shouldn't matter so much

coldtea3• 5 years ago

And the diminishing returns from jumping from a "budget" watch of 3-500$ to a "nice" one of 2-3000$ are ridiculously small.

When it comes to keeping time, potentially underwater, etc, there are no extra returns, diminishing or not, functionality-wise to going from a $300 to a $3000. A $80 G-Force will do all of that and better.

Now, if we include "sociatal value" (seen as rich, sophisticated) there are also not much returns from going above $300. At that level people wont know what you wear and wont care.

If you want to make an impression to those who do know, and can tell, you'll need to go above $10000. And if you have that kind of money, you probably don't need to make an impression.

lm284692• 5 years ago

At that level people wont know what you wear and wont care.

A friend of mine got a watch for his birthday (or Christmas I don't remember), he showed it to me and I told him: "Oh nice, it has a transparent back to display the 'automatic' mechanism, just like my $60 swatch from the 80s"

Turns out his watch costs more than $4k... You're so right, unless you're in a social circle who knows as much as you do about watches, you can have a $30 copy or a $30k original, it doesn't really matter, all people will see is "a nice watch"

JohnBooty10• 5 years ago

It's all true.

Although, there are vastly divergent ways to tackle this hobby.

Lots of people focus on cheap quartz watches and affordable mechanicals from Seiko and the like. Personally, I am head over heels for Casio as well. You can have a great Casio collection (MDV-106 Duro, G-Shock, A168) for under $100. Casio has sold their original black G-Shock virtually unchanged for decades; you can pick one up for $45 at Amazon or WalMart and a lot of folks consider that watch as important as anything Rolex has ever done.

While I admittedly was quickly "addicted" to watches, climbing the ladder of luxury watches held zero interest to me. It was just so obvious to me from the beginning: you can literally spend as much as you want and you'll never be happy. Cars, hi-fi gear, it all works that way.

    Their beauty combined with their flaws puts people on 
    the never ending, wallet destroying quest for the holy 
    grail. And the diminishing returns from jumping from a 
    "budget" watch of 3-500$ to a "nice" one of 2-3000$ are
    ridiculously small.

I never felt this pressure, but many do. The nice thing about this hobby is that nobody gives a shit what you're wearing.

The average person just sees that you're wearing a watch, unless you're wearing something super gaudy.

Watch people... well, they're kind of like car people. The prices for truly top-end stuff are so astronomical that nobody can afford it anyway, so folks just focus on little niches that interest them. Your average car nut has a collection that is more "quirky" and "surprising bang for the buck" than "this is the ultimate car, bow down to me." Similar with watches: it's generally not like a pecking order where people with $5000 watches look down on people with $500 watches. People who really like this stuff tend to just appreciate cool watches, whatever "cool" means to them.

piva00• 5 years ago

This push for watches feel eerily similar to the push of diamonds (or gem stones) towards women. As with any luxury item you need to create demand somehow.

Watches are considered "men's jewelry" so I think there is something ongoing in the jewelry industry, either a hop to find new markets as the women's one might be saturated for a while (I think in the same sense of the tobacco industry targeting women through the 1920s to 1960s, men were captured early on so the female demographics was a huge untapped market).

I feel that some friends the past 5 years have started more and more to talk about mechanical watches, it definitely feels like an artificial demand pushed by marketing.

JohnBooty10• 5 years ago

    I feel that some friends the past 5 years have 
    started more and more to talk about mechanical 
    watches, it definitely feels like an artificial 
    demand pushed by marketing.

I've noticed it a bit too.

All of us are more influenced by marketing than we'd like to admit and certainly more than we realize. No arguments there. However, it's not like I've seen any sort of marketing push for mechanical watches. I just don't see any marketing for them whatsoever.

The question for me is, is it because the marketing situation has changed? Or is it because watches are kind of an "old guy" thing and we're all five years older than we were five years ago? Personally I feel it's the latter.

But, I can think of two indirect possibilities from the marketing side of things.

1. There has been kind of a marketing push from newcomers like Daniel Wellington and MVMT on Instagram. That's all overpriced trashy quartz stuff. But, I suppose it gets people thinking about watches.

2. Much like the rise of Starbucks got a lot of new people thinking about coffee 20 years ago, I think the success of smart watches got a lot of new people thinking about watches.

techbio2• 5 years ago

I once bought a genuine Rollex watch, for $10, and a co-worker said I'd been had. May be, maybe not.

techbio2• 5 years ago

It literally had the extra 'l' on the face. I got my money's worth.

newdude116• 5 years ago

Piece of advertisement.

I like mechanical watches and you can get an excellent automatic watch with Swiss parts for 500 USD. Possibly 300 USD from China if you don't mind China made.

A Rolex for USD 7500 is manufactured for around USD 1000

https://www.reddit.com/r/Watches/comments/4wlla1/rolex_how_m...

The rest? Profit and Marketing, Marketing, Marketing. The Thread opener is part of the marketing.

dang• 5 years ago

If curious see also

2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13459616

Rolex's Manufacturing Facilities (2015)

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