Rolex
From Acquired by Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal
January 3, 2026 · 4h 59m · Season 16 · Episode 2
About this episode
This episode explores the paradoxes surrounding Rolex, a luxury watch brand known for its high demand and unique business model.
Rolex is a series of paradoxes. They sell obsolete and objectively inferior mechanical devices for 10-1000x the price of their superior digital successors… and demand is stronger than ever in history! Their products are comparable to a Hermès Birkin bag in price, luxury status and waitlist times… yet they produce over 1m units / year (roughly 10x annual Birkin production). They make the most universally recognized and desired Swiss watches… yet their founder wasn’t Swiss and didn’t start the company in Switzerland! If Rolex were publicly traded, they’d almost certainly be among the top 50 market cap companies in the world… yet they’re 100% owned by a charitable foundation in Geneva that (among other things) literally just gives away money to local people in the city. Tune in for one of the most fascinating and admirable companies we’ve ever covered on Acquired. We had an absolute blast making the episode, and hope you enjoy it as much as we did! This episode was released on February 23, 2025. Sponsors: Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25 Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry WorkOS: https://acquired.fm/unplugged Playing Cards: https://bit.ly/workOSshop (Code: ACQDECK)…
Topics covered
- Rolex
- luxury watches
- business paradoxes
Keywords
- mechanical watches
- digital successors
- charitable foundation
- Swiss watches
Sponsors
WorkOS, Intapp, Sentry, Anthropic
Mentioned in this episode
Products: Birkin, Rolex
Places: Switzerland, Geneva
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