A ZFS developer’s analysis of the good and bad in Apple’s new APFS file system | Ars Technica – this is a good guide by Adam Levanthal. The thing that puzzles me is this. Apple had a working implementation of ZFS running on early beta versions of OS X and then decided not to implement it. Apple adoption of ZFS would be a major boost (it is already supported on Linux and Solaris). It takes about a decade for a file system to mature sufficiently; ZFS has that maturity and is still bleeding edge tech. Apple has a good relationship with Oracle so that wouldn’t be a problem, Larry Ellison is still the shot-caller over there and he still hates Microsoft and Google. Instead they build their own version, which has nice encryption facilities but lacks the data integrity features that ZFS has. It doesn’t seem to be about squeezing the footprint of ZFS for mobile devices either. Apple just decided to go it alone for reasons that aren’t readily apparent at the moment with APFS.
Huawei sees building alternative to Android as insurance amid US-China trade tensions | SCMP – not a big leap from an OS point of view. The big jump would be the app store since both Google and Amazon’s app stores would be out of reach if Huawei were found guilty. A way around this would be the likes of SailfishOS which would also deal with lingering security concerns about Huawei handsets. More Huawei related content here.
APAC markets exceed global benchmarks for viewability, brand safety | Digital | Campaign Asia – fraud rates for campaigns that optimised against fraud remained relatively flat, showing optimisation efforts are paying off by keeping fraud rates low. Singapore and Hong Kong had higher fraud risk at 20.7% and 14.0% respectively, because ad fraudsters tend to follow where the digital spend goes and where CPMs are higher.
U.S. DoJ probing Huawei for possible Iran sanctions violations: WSJ – interesting that they are getting dinged for similar things to ZTE. Stopping US vendors from selling to Huawei would be a bit less impactful than on ZTE. But it would retarget the Huawei R&D budget away from innovation to replacing American component technology and engineering services currently provided by the likes of Ciena or Qualcomm. This actually fits neatly with Mr Xi’s China 2025 manufacturing initiative that is designed to free the country from relying on international suppliers.
Electric Autos – Long life – I think it’s more complex, depending on vehicle range and driving patterns will factor into demand. Of course the shit is really going to hit the fan when lithium ion technology fails to provide for transport needs like long distance heavy goods vehicles, becomes too expensive and essential materials become too rare. There is likely to be a pivot to hydrogen combustion engines or hydrogen fuel cells due to superior energy density. The economics around risk, infrastructure and other capital costs will change.
Slashdot Linux Story | Native ZFS Is Coming To Linux Next Month – this is an interesting move having ZFS on Linux, hopefully ZFS will go mainstream across all OS. ZFS on Linux allows a more efficient usage of storage since existing file systems were designed for disk sizes orders of magnitude smaller than present sizes. The cloud needs this because at some point the data needs to be addressed at disk-level, but it will also be handy to have enterprise level file systems. ZFS on Linux still isn’t a rival to native ZFS on Solaris
FT.com / China – China’s growth model ‘unsustainable’ (pay wall) – rising social tensions, choking pollution, a lack of public services and an over-reliance on exports and investment, particularly in real estate cited as challenges to the country’s economic future in China Daily op-ed
Cigarette Giants in a Global Fight on Tighter Rules – NYTimes.com – if these measures are implemented, reducing the ‘brand totem’ of the cigarette packet, will it instead bring in white label brands and roll-your-own tabacco? Are some of the countries implementing this for health reasons or business reasons?
The EU’s Digital Economy Gets Ready for a Makeover – WSJ.com – The EU has a “copyright system that has done the job for 200 years and been quite successful. But that was when there were separate countries fighting it out on battlefields,” she said. “Once we have a solution for copyright, then it will be easier to attack piracy. If you solve the real problem, then there will be less piracy.”
F.B.I. Seeks Wider Wiretap Law for Web – NYTimes.com – so the trick would be to use services not aimed at US consumers to hide in? Either that or it could go for a ‘great firewall’-type solution to only allow US nationals to use US services
I was privileged to freelance at Ogilvy on Dove a number of years ago and got to understand the brand a little better during that time. My work on Dove was focused on product advertising for Dove soap in Brazil, the US, Vietnam and the Philippines rather than adding to the master brand canon around beauty standards.
When the 20th anniversary of the master brand campaign rolled around my LinkedIn was filled with posts about 20 years of the Real Beauty (or changing beauty as its currently articulated) positioning for the Dove brand. I took more of a slow read/write approach to my take on Dove.
Dove origin.
The origins of Dove lie in the injuries experienced by American servicemen during world war two. There was a need for a milder soap to address the needs of burn victims, and the concept of having moisturising cream (or cleansing cream as it was called in the earlier ads) was included in the soap to rehydrate skin rather than leaving it excessively dry after stripping off the skins natural oils.
Dove was introduced as a consumer product in 1957. The original advertising focused on the functional benefits of the product.
Decades later and the Dove advertising continued to focus on the products functional benefits.
For instance this 1990s advert positions Dove against everyday beauty brands and premium brand Neutrogena.
Dove still does functional benefit advertising, but it’s the master brand level advertisements that tend to get the most attention.
2004.
It is worthwhile considering the context that Dove was entering into with its reinvention. While we were post-9/11 the culture still has the optimism of the early 2000s. Celebrity gossip and paparazzi photos and videos were still a thing. Facebook had been launched for Harvard University students. Myspace had launched a year earlier with a focus on music and blogging was gaining a head of steam as a social channel. Real Media had launched a streaming music service but Spotify was a couple of years away from launch.
iTunes music downloads, CD ripping and iPods were reinventing music. Television shows were used to find the next popstars, while Dido and Eminem were dominating radio play.
DVD series box sets were a thing. Season three of TV show 24 was the must see TV with Jack Bauer trying to stop a biological terrorist attack and deal with his own heroin addiction.
I was using a Nokia smartphone and a Palm Tungsten T personal digital assistant at the time.
Beauty soap category at the time.
Beauty soap was not a new category. Unilever had arguably marketed the first beauty soap called Pears. By the time real beauty happened Pears was no longer distributed or marketed by Unilever in the UK. As well as Dove, Unilever owned Lux which was seen to be a ‘milder for your skin’ soap. By this time, Lux was a heritage brand that my Grandmother had liked and its main market focus was Latin America, Africa and South / South East Asia. Lux has pivoted to a girl power like position against societal sexism in its brand purpose led advertising.
Procter and Gamble had their own Lux analogue called Camay that traded on the glamour of famous actresses and socialites. At this time Camay was not seen as contemporary in the UK, but was selling well in Eastern Europe. By a strange twist of fate P&G sold Camay to Unilever in 2015, it was available in Latin America.
Simple soap was a British market competitor that had been part of Smith and Nephew’s spin-off of their consumer products division to focus on their medical businesses including advanced wound management. Simple’s positioning was that it contained no unnecessary ingredients and that it was ideal for sensitive skin.
Nivea had cleaning products like shower gels rather than soap per se but was in the personal care space.
At the time, Dove like Palmolive and Simple might be bought by a housewife and used by all the family. My Mum and Dad still use Dove or Simple soap bars, based on which they find first on their supermarket run.
Real beauty.
Dove’s global brand team wanted to reposition Dove more firmly in the beauty category. The story that is promoted revolves around how the brand team presented the Unilever board at the time with interview footage from their wives and daughters about their opinions on beauty.
There were a few iconic images that came out of the campaign.
https://flic.kr/p/cK2ndL
The tickbox images that appeared in a lot of out of home executions at the time.
https://flic.kr/p/2pKnnFq
The Dove evolution video which captured what lots of people knew in the media industry, but tapped into wider public discussions about the use of photo manipulation that were appearing around that time.
How real beauty memed.
Dove’s outdoor execution in the London Underground had wags using pens and markers to suggest the negative answers. I remember on the escalator in Holborn station seeing every advert with the box ticked. It even memed with online celebrity news site Holymoly launching the campaign for real gossip.
Dove Men+Care range.
Dove brand extension Dove Men+Care was launched in 2010 and now has a comprehensive range of everyday products. Unilever described this as a ‘white space’. But Nivea for Men had been in this space since 1986 and Nivea had sold shaving products to men as far back as the 1920s.
Dove Men+Care’s purpose wasn’t that clear when I worked on Dove as the master brand is so focused on empowering women and girls.
We believe that care makes a man stronger, and in order to best care for those that matter to you most, you need to start with care for yourself first.
This take from the Unilever website about what the Dove Man+Care brand stands for is still very generic and it could cover anything from Gillette or a Jordan Peterson sound bite to Andrew Tate’s various manosphere-oriented, fitness-focused enterprises.
The risk of a male counterpart.
It would be a major undertaking to build this into something a bit more pointed, yet fit for purpose. I could understand why it would be low on the priority list, particularly when Gillette’s effort was received so badly at the time.
We know from behavioural science that positive reinforcement works better than taking a negative stance. I have heard a couple of hypotheses put around at the time that:
Men may use Gillette razors; but women in households buy them.
Women represent the largest growth market for disposable razor systems due Gillette’s male market dominance, male consumers inertia to change brand once chosen and facial hair growth – meant that the Gillette brand team didn’t feel that they were taking a risk.
In both cases, men feature in the advert, but may not have been the ads target audience.
However I think that the media buying suggests these hypotheses were wrong. The ad was run during a prime TV spot on the Super Bowl. Critics point to Procter & Gamble taking a $8 billion non-cash writedown for the shaving giant.
P&G reported a net loss of about $5.24 billion, or $2.12 per share, for the quarter ended June 30, due to an $8 billion non-cash writedown of Gillette. For the same period last year, P&G’s net income was $1.89 billion, or 72 cents per share.
…The charge was also driven by more competition over the past three years and a shrinking market for blades and razors as consumers in developed markets shave less frequently. Net sales in the grooming business, which includes Gillette, have declined in 11 out of the last 12 quarters.
From a societal perspective in general masculinity related topics is a cultural land mine; particularly when #allmenaretrash and similarhashtags are now commonplace, so it is harder to use in an effective manner the kind of nuance Gillette attempted.
Egard – a watch brand made this response video to Gillette.
Impact
Dove grew as a brand and became a form of social currency. It made the agencies involved (Ogilvy and Edelman) famous for years to come. What Edelman actually contributed to the creative concept is open for debate.
In terms of the Dove real beauty brand purpose, the results seem to be more mixed.
The current Dove master brand ad ‘The Code’ seems to be very similar to the original ‘Evolution’ ad, the only changes have been that Photoshop was being used by an expert and AI has now put it in the hand of teenage girls.
While the public discourse has changed behaviours haven’t and the wellbeing of girls and women seems to be in a similar or worse position today than it was 20 years ago.
Part of this is likely to be societal, we live in more anxious times and the status quo may have been even worse, had Dove not sparked the kind of public discourse it had.
Brand purpose?
At the time when Dove’s campaign came out, I can’t remember purpose really being a ‘thing’. The closest thing I could remember in the marketing zeitgeist is that people would occasionally talk about technology in terms of the pitch a young Steve Jobs made to PepsiCo executive John Sculley: do you want to sell sugared water all your life, or do you want to change the world?
There was talk about changing attitudes and creating a movement – but it was seen in terms of creativity, rather than a higher purpose.
At the time Unilever’s fragrance brand Lynx / AXE were running creative like this.
AXE / Lynx is still the world’s number one men’s fragrance brand, but its positioning has changed a bit.
When you smell good, good things happen. You’re a little more confident and life opens up a world of possibilities. We believe that attraction is for everyone and between anyone. It doesn’t matter your race, your sexuality, or your pronouns. If you’re into it and they’re into it, we’re into it. That’s The New AXE Effect.
Lynx and AXE content wasn’t that far out. Advertising in the late 1990s and early 2000s wasn’t so serene. You has several ad campaigns that were subversive or transgressive in nature.
A good deal of this was cultural zeitgeist. If you were a creative director in your mid-30s at the time, your terms of reference were very different. You would have likely enjoyed sub-cultures like the rave scene and independent music that drew from 1960s psychedelia and counterculture icons. You probably watched the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow film, one of their TV appearances or attended one of their live shows. Russell Brand was considered funny.
Brands getting attention and critical acclaim like Sony’s Playstation gaming console, Levi’s and Skittles were taking brand risks with campaigns that were far edgier than we’d be likely to see now. One direct mail shot from Sony Playstation designed to promote the Tekken 3 fighting game was sent out in a plain manilla envelope stamped ‘private and confidential’. Inside was a convincing medical card advising that the recipient receive immediate medical treatment for a potentially serious condition. Some of those mailed were waiting for hospital test results and complained to the authorities.
Meanwhile in the US, Mountain Dew was promoting pager plans as part of a co-marketing deal. But this was happening in the middle of a moral panic on pagers being a portal to drug dealer hook-ups and teen prostitutes receiving bookings from johns. Kids were being arrested and charged for possessing pagers in schools and colleges.
Failed online business Pets.com had a distinctive shouty voice that we probably hadn’t seen since Poundland’s ‘teabagged’ social posts.
Two examples give a good temperature check of what was happening in agency teams at this time up to just before 2010.
The Volkswagen ‘terrorist’ film that was used as a door opener by creative team Lee Ford and Dan Brooks. It leaked online, much to the bemusement of Volkswagen. Creatives thought it would be well received by a brand marketing team with a sense of humour. While VW didn’t like it, it did get them work with a large production house in the US and London agency Quiet Storm.
The second one was Lean Green Fighting Machine’s Facebook campaign for Dr Pepper in 2010, that referenced an online Brazilian porn clip known as ‘2 girls, one cup’. The client had signed it off, without knowing the context. Controversy ensued on Mumsnet and the agency was fired from the account.
Amidst all this cynicism, boundary pushing and counterculture; Dove’s real beauty would have been distinctive and differentiated. Even if it did run a risk of being perceived as cynical self-serving corporate schmaltz.
Brand purpose as an idea seems to have gained popular currency after Dove’s campaign for real beauty.
You can see in this chart based on Google Books data how the English language mentions of ‘brand purpose’ took off.
Data from Google Books Ngram viewer
Brand purpose critic Nick Asbury places the rise of brand purpose to the 2008 financial crisis and related events such as the Occupy movement, which supports the post-2014 surge in interest. 20 years later, Dove is now seen as being emblematic of brand purpose. Dove took on brand purpose as a concept over time, with the increasing prominence of the Dove Self-Esteem Project being a case in point.
Porsche committed to major long form content as it followed Michael Fassbender on the road to Le Mans.
Season one
Road to Le Mans started off over four years ago with six short form films, each no longer than 10 minutes in length. So far, pretty much what you would expect in a prestige luxury car brand film. I was reminded of BMW’s ‘The Hire’ film series over the years with Clive Owen as the driver.
Season two
Porsche must have had positive feedback to continue with a second series in a similar vein to series one of Road to Le Mans. But some of the episodes were double the length of series one and three more episodes in this series. Looking at the Porsche YouTube channel the two seasons were likely considered to be a complete arc. They build a playlist that holds only season one and season two.
The manage to switch around the voices in the narrative which I think adds more in season two and season three.
Season three
By season three, the series seems to have hit its stride. The episodes are as long as they need to be.
Season four
Season four seems to have more of Fassbender’s voice in it.
Feature film
The theme of resilience in the face of failure was an interesting, honest angle in the film. Road to Le Mans emphasises stoicism and resilience as much as it emphasises the performance of the car. The feature film is an edit together of season four.
Although it’s Fassbender’s journey and I respect what he’s done, it feels a bit self indulgent at times. I think that this is because the actor’s journey as a profession isn’t a team sport in the same way that most other roles are.
What Road to Le Man also brought through to me was the depth of achievement in Porsche’s 18 Le Mans overall victories. This film feels like a final chapter to this Road to Le Mans at least.
Porsche seem to have shouldered the cost of the film themselves, I was a bit surprised that the content wasn’t licensed to a streaming service like Netflix and then eventually put on YouTube. More related content here.
The luxury sector was surprised by the acquisition of Bucherer AG by Rolex. Bucherer was founded in 1888 by Carl F. Bucherer. Over time, it grew to be a 100 store international network of watch and jewellery shops. In addition, the company owns a watch brand called Carl F. Bucherer. The chairman Jeorg Bucherer is the last of Bucherer family. His lack of a successor and the family’s close connection to the Rolex Foundation were given as a reasons for the sale.
Bucherer in Lausanne
Why should Bucherer sell?
Bucherer pivoting to a sale was surprising. Part of this is down both companies being private. Neither publicly disclose finances or appear regularly in the media. We don’t know if the offer came from Rolex or if Bucherer approached Rolex with a view to sell.
If Rolex made the first move
If it was Rolex that made the move, then saying no would put the 100+ strong Bucherer retail showroom network at risk. While Bucherer represents 5 percent of Rolex’ global sales. Rolex means much more to Bucherer; 53 of their stores are Rolex authorised dealerships and 48 are Tudor authorised dealers. Having a Rolex franchise increases footfall and likely boosted sales of other brands in Bucherer stores.
If Rolex were invited to make an offer
If, like it was claimed that Bucherer’s decision was down to the lack of succession, why did Bucherer conduct a lot of activity to grow its business internationally?
Bucherer has continued to expand its retail and service network. It reputedly spent up to $350 million buying US luxury watch retailer Tourneau five years ago.
The Carl F. Bucherer (CFB) watch brand has put a lot of effort in terms of expanding its watch line-up, which are made in its own factory in Lengnau, Switzerland. This watch range uses some movements that are based on La Joux-Perret or ETA movements and some which seem to be complete in-house designs that look to mirror the kind of horology that the likes of Patek Philippe are better known for. A good example of this is the minute repeater below.
Watch featuring their inhouse M3000 movement.
The watch making side of the business has continued to design innovative movements including novel technology designs.
The brand has worked on marketing its watches globally from a roster of Chinese and western actors as brand ambassadors, movie product placement including Deadpool 2 and the John Wick series. In 2018, they worked with JD.com to establish a watch brand-specific online storefront for the China market. Marketing activity continued through the COVID pandemic.
At the beginning of July this year they launched a new watch model: the Heritage Chronometer Celebration in rose gold.
This doesn’t sound like the brand was preparing for a sale due to a lack of family members to take over the reins. So why the sudden change?
Why should Rolex buy Bucherer?
Vertical integration?
Bucherer apparently counted for five percent of Rolex’ global sales, but had showrooms in strategically important markets like Geneva, London, New York and Paris.
Bucherer was the pioneer retail partner for Rolex’ CPO (certified pre-owned) programme; so their relationship was already very close. The programme was suspected to be rolled out for a number of reasons:
To try and deal with authorised dealers shortage of new Rolex stock, that had driven ‘watch flipping’ and allegations of corrupt sales practices at Rolex authorised dealers. If customers leave the authorised dealer network, Rolex loses control of the customer experience.
To allow Rolex additional profits from the inflated pre-owned watch market driven by pre-owned watch dealers catering to massively increased consumer demand.
More on the allegations of corrupt sales practices
While the CPO programme arrived just as the pre-owned watch market peaked (and at the time of writing its now at a two year low), it hints at the benefits to Rolex of having both circular and vertical integration.
Buying Bucherer potentially gives Rolex 100+ owned outlets. Why would Rolex want to own its retail outlets? Let’s go back to 1977 and a seminal event in the current luxury industry history. Madame Renée Vuitton asked her son-in-law to take over the family business. Henry Racamier got under the hood of the business and found that franchisees were making the bulk of the profits. So, slowly but surely Racamier set the business on the path to vertical integration. Racamier’s only business mistake was getting involved with Bernard Arnault, who took the Racamier formula and built LVMH into the giant that it is today.
Racamier, set a path that Audemars Piguet would eventually follow. Vertical integration would mean control and increased income for the Rolex Foundation.
For Rolex, owning its showrooms is not without risk. The reactive statements by Rolex that the brand shops would maintain their brand and management seems to be designed to placate Swiss competition authorities. What the subsequent integration into Rolex Group operations would look like may depend on regulatory concerns.
Swiss competition authority COMCO confirmed that was was analysing the deal. It accesses impact based on size and its possible effect to eliminate effective competition.
Bucherer is a sales agent for much of the luxury Swiss watch industry
Baum & Mercier
Bell & Ross
Blancpain
Bregeut
Bulgari
Cartier
Chopard
Frederique Constant
Girard-Perregeaux
Hublot
IWC
Jaeger LeCoultre
Longines
Maurice Lacroix
Montblanc
Omega
Oris
Panerai
Piaget
Rado
Roger Dubuis
TAG Heuer
Tissot
Ulysse Nardin
Vacheron Constantin
Zenith
Secondly, being a retailer and being a manufacturer is a very different business. If Rolex is going to learn about retail, it needs to spend years understanding Bucherer’s current business. Even then, there is no guarantee that it will follow the owned single brand showroom network model.
CPO and circular economy
The idea of the circular economy is now a big idea in the luxury sector and fits into the ‘Perpetual Planet’ tenet of the Rolex Foundation and at least part of the thinking behind the CPO programme. The idea is that a product can be serviced and or resold from its first owner to successive owners. This would require less new materials to be mined and less energy expended on the manufacturing process. The customer would end up with a product that is long-lasting and better for the planet.
Rolex watches like the 1960s era 5513 Submariner are still worn as everyday watches and will likely outlast you and I, if they are serviced once every five years and parts replaced on an as-needed basis. Secondly, there is a premium set on authenticity – vintage items that may have already lived an interesting life. You see this desire for authenticity from fashionistas thrifting to Rolex collectors prizing COMEX and military-issued models.
Finally, there is precedent for watchmaker participation in the circular economy; Richemont are already in the pre-owned market with their ownership of WatchFinder.
Avoiding a retail power shift?
Bucherer is the largest of independent privately owned Rolex authorised dealer networks. Rolex has about 2,000 outlets worldwide. If a rival or a private equity company bought Bucherer on its own, it wouldn’t be a big deal. But if the private equity buyer used Bucherer as a hub and bought up:
Wempe – which has a multi-country footprint (Austria, France, Germany, Spain, USA and the UK). Like Bucherer, Wempe is also a watch brand.
David Rosas that has a network of seven stores in Portugal.
Emperor Watch and Jewellery that has a footprint in Hong Kong, Macau, the Chinese mainland, Malaysia and Singapore.
You then have a private equity run authorised dealership network that would be a substantial part of Rolex Group sales and more likely to try and dictate terms to the watch maker. Often this doesn’t work, a classic example of this is how Phones4U went under after trying to dictate terms to the mobile networks. Regardless of whether Rolex fended this off or were enthralled by the dealer network, it would be damaging for the Rolex brand, its global reach and customer experience.
Realistically, Rolex dealers whilst profitable miss out on some of the things that private equity firms look for:
Huge cost-cutting potential – this might happen if you can scale to a dominant position in the Rolex dealership network and leverage it to get costs reduced. Stores tended to be staffed pretty lean already with Bucherer using one sales manager for three London showrooms. There would be limited scaling benefits for business functions.
Huge growth potential – maybe, but you’re still constrained by the nature of the luxury market and the complex eco-system of grey market and pre-owned specialists.
All of this would take time, likely longer than the 4 to 6 years that private equity investors typically look for their return. But that doesn’t rule out sovereign funds from the likes of the Gulf states.
Taking Bucherer off the table means that the notional private equity firm would likely need to buy a larger publicly listed partner like Watches of Switzerland. This would likely cost more on a store-for-store basis and be less attractive to private equity.
Watch servicing
Bucherer has provided Rolex with watch servicing capability through its retail network, which gives you the high level of trust that Rolex had in the brand. Having greater service capacity would be beneficial as waiting times can take as long as six months for a Rolex service. At best this is a secondary benefit for the Rolex organisation. Purchasing it would be beneficial to prevent it falling into the hands of LVMH who have increasing ambitions in watchmaking.
Manufacturing
Rolex is building three temporary manufacturing units, for use until its new factory comes online in Bulle, Switzerland some six years from now. This will be the fifth Rolex-owned factory in Switzerland. The Lengnau factory would their add to the existing manufacturing capacity or offer additional capability. Lengnau manufactures a range of movements and complications with COSC chronometer certification. The question would then be, what would Rolex do with the additional manufacturing capacity and how would it fit into the Rolex system?
In addition to manufacturing capacity, the brand brings innovation in movement design to the table from a novel balance wheel driving an automatic movement to a minute repeater movement.
if Carl F. Bucherer were kept as a separate brand it would likely benefit from being part of Rolex’ larger materials purchases from suppliers and transfer of process technologies to further improve its own manufacturing line. Scale has its advantages.
Rolex multi-brand strategy
Rolex has more demand than it’s prepared to supply for its own brand watches and the brand has been moved upmarket into the luxury space by management since the 2000s. Its second brand Tudor has been reinvigorated through the use of innovative watch materials and playing on both the Rolex and Tudor brands heritage. Tudor seems to be moving into Rolex’s classic brand positioning, while Rolex moves its price and positioning even further upmarket. But both of these brands sit firmly in the tool watch space, despite Rolex being available in precious metals.
Having a third brand would allow Rolex to move in a number of directions:
Have a brand that could slot in below Tudor, which the CFB Pratavi models could do.
Allow Tudor to go exclusively heritage in their design language. The CFB Pratavi models would represent a more contemporary looking alternative.
Go after the non-Rolex space of horological designs from the likes of Audemars Piguet, Blancpain, H Moser, Patek Philippe or Vacheron Constantin. Rolex hasn’t committed to going after this part of the market previously because of its Lexus-like reputation for reliability, even in their most expensive models. This could be done with the CFB Manero and Heritage ranges which have similar complications.
Rolex has shown for decades with the Tudor brand that it was prepared to take its time, so reinventing and repositioning another watch brand isn’t out of the question.
Watches of Switzerland
The long squeeze?
As news of the acquisition got out Watches of Switzerland (WoS) shares plummeted almost 30 percent. Rolex represents about 50 percent of WoS sales. So investors were concerned about the impact that this might have in the watch market.
What if Bucherer represented, just a first move by Rolex? What if Rolex wanted to get a readymade wholly owned global footprint. Buying WoS at a depressed price would provide the ideal footprint. Porsche very nearly succeeded in a buy out of Volkswagen in 2008 that riffed on this approach.
Like the Bucherer deal, it may receive competition scrutiny. However such an approach would likely face action from the Swiss regulator COMCO, even if the UK’s CMA didn’t step in.
A second reason not to do an intentional long squeeze on WoS is that it might attract institutional investment from deep pocketed hedge funds and private equity firms who previously wouldn’t have looked at WoS as a target, to build a dealer network and in turn squeeze Rolex.
Preference
Rolex wouldn’t need to get rid of Watches of Switzerland in order to do damage to the brand. Just the perception that Bucherer had a more favoured status for Rolex availability would be enough to adversely affect footfall to its showrooms.
This is something that could happen even if Bucherer remained an independently operated multi-brand watch retailer.
