Aegler, every mention

Rolex (Audio) · Acquired Feb 24, 2025 · 31 mentions

• ▶ 26:53 David Rosenthal Hans is importing these movements from Agler that he's putting into cases, selling his watches here in the UK.
• ▶ 27:11 David Rosenthal Finally buys Egler in 2004, where Egler is making the movements for Rolex watches, and I don't think there's ever any real formal arrangement here.
• ▶ 32:21 Ben Gilbert He places the largest order in Egler's company history, several 100,000 Swiss francs, for a bunch of these tiny movements.
• ▶ 37:26 Ben Gilbert And without Egler, they kind of weren't.
• ▶ 37:45 David Rosenthal So, Hans and Eegler keep working on these products, refining the movements.
• ▶ 37:50 David Rosenthal Eegler's getting better and better at making wristwatch movements that are truly great.
• ▶ 38:00 Ben Gilbert Wilsdorf asks Eegler specifically, hey, can you produce a wristwatch capable of achieving an observatory timekeeping certificate?
• ▶ 38:10 Ben Gilbert And, David, as you mentioned, the Royal Observatory, and Egler says, let me try, and let me get to work.
• ▶ 38:18 David Rosenthal So he works for two years, and then finally, in early summer, 1914, Hans takes one of Egler's movements to the Kew Royal Observatory in England, K-E-W-Q, for testing.
• ▶ 47:25 David Rosenthal To Bien in the Swiss mountainside near where Egler is.
• ▶ 54:54 Ben Gilbert Well, now that we've set up shop next to Egler for putting their movements in our cases, it's time for us to get a little bit closer.
• ▶ 55:03 Ben Gilbert So Rolex and Egler arrange for a deal where in 1919 1919 20, Hermann Egler, who's the son of the founder, Jean, buys shares in Rolex, unclear what the purchase price was, that seems to have been lost to history, and joins the board.
• ▶ 55:25 Ben Gilbert There's a second part of the deal, which is Rolex actually buys shares in Agler, too, and this one's less talked about, but there were two companies that were big purchasers of the movements.
• ▶ 55:46 Ben Gilbert Agler shares also.
• ▶ 1:02:41 David Rosenthal And Rolex were not watchmakers until they finally bought Agler in 2004.
• ▶ 1:35:15 Ben Gilbert The credit for how accurate they were was really all Agler's innovation.
• ▶ 1:39:09 Ben Gilbert This is when Rolex goes to Agler and says, hey, we want to take all of your production.
• ▶ 1:39:16 Ben Gilbert And so Gruen stops buying movements from Agler,
• ▶ 1:39:19 Ben Gilbert This is where I think Rolex may have bought the shares back from Egler, but again, we don't know and we'll never know, because no one at Rolex will ever talk about that.
• ▶ 1:39:26 Ben Gilbert And this is also when Egler adds Rolex to its name.
• ▶ 1:39:31 David Rosenthal The Egler manufacturer of Rolex watches.
• ▶ 1:58:14 Ben Gilbert Different manufacturers are outside the brand, and so you just go around to all the component manufacturers, and Rolex is a little different because they have Agler, but in general, you can go around to find all the different tiny little…
• ▶ 2:46:24 Ben Gilbert David viewed it as go as deep as possible on the entire history of the brand itself, the company, the relationship with Agler, and each of the watch models.
• ▶ 3:29:54 David Rosenthal He presided over, most importantly, the Agler acquisition in 2004.
• ▶ 3:29:58 David Rosenthal For rumored roughly a billion Swiss francs, Rolex buys Agler and makes it officially in-house.
• ▶ 3:42:49 Ben Gilbert This was one of the first retail partners for Rolex in the super early days, and actually, this alliance, plus the Agler-
• ▶ 4:00:30 Ben Gilbert And originally, they actually were Rolex cases and bracelets, but with off-the-shelf movements from a third-party vendor, ETA, which is actually now part of Swatch Group, versus the ones that Rolex was getting from Agler.
• ▶ 4:01:18 David Rosenthal And all their movements are Igler movements, you know, now in-house Rolex movements.
• ▶ 4:01:23 David Rosenthal Tudor does not use Agler movements, does not use Rolex movements, they use third-party movements.
• ▶ 4:33:53 Ben Gilbert You know, I was reflecting on the question, the one time I think they really did take risk was the wristwatch order from Agler.
• ▶ 4:34:24 Ben Gilbert And I'm sure Agler extended them some credit.