Rolex, every mention

Rolex (Audio) · Acquired Feb 24, 2025 · 100 mentions

• ▶ 1:41:12 David Rosenthal Rolex makes the Panerai watch.
• ▶ 1:41:53 David Rosenthal Yep, and so here they are selling to the Italian Navy on the Axis side.
• ▶ 1:41:58 David Rosenthal Meanwhile, the thing that they're most focused on is trying to figure out some way to start re-exporting to Britain, selling to their old main market on the Allied side.
• ▶ 1:42:07 David Rosenthal They do figure out later in 1940 how to get watches back into Britain.
• ▶ 1:42:12 David Rosenthal They sort of launder them first through Spain and Portugal and then through the Strait of Gibraltar get up to Britain.
• ▶ 1:43:01 David Rosenthal All of these British Royal Air Force pilots, they're all wearing Rolex watches, because at this point, Rolex make the best wristwatches, the most accurate, the most weatherproof to all the elements.
• ▶ 1:43:07 David Rosenthal
• ▶ 1:43:48 David Rosenthal Rolex weren't the only ones that were selling to both sides here, but nonetheless, World War II is really changing the nature of what you need out of a wristwatch.
• ▶ 1:44:35 Ben Gilbert Well, coming out of the war is really when Rolex starts to
• ▶ 1:46:16 David Rosenthal I don't think communists were buying a lot of Rolexes.
• ▶ 1:46:19 Ben Gilbert I'm sure there's some crazy stories about black market communist dealers of Rolexes to Russia post-World War II.
• ▶ 1:46:28 David Rosenthal I'm pretty sure Castro famously loved Rolexes.
• ▶ 1:46:33 Ben Gilbert There's like some photos of him where he's wearing two Rolexes.
• ▶ 1:46:41 David Rosenthal Nothing screams communism like multiple Rolexes on your wrist.
• ▶ 1:46:44 Ben Gilbert He's wearing, I think it's a Rolex GMT and a Submariner on the same wrist.
• ▶ 1:46:44 Ben Gilbert He's wearing, I think it's a Rolex GMT and a Submariner on the same wrist.
• ▶ 1:46:58 David Rosenthal Or he just wanted to wear two Rolexes on his wrist because he could.
• ▶ 1:47:03 David Rosenthal Okay, well, the non-black market for Rolexes after the war
• ▶ 1:47:11 David Rosenthal And Hans and the company devise just about the most genius, you know, three-putt scheme to get there imaginable.
• ▶ 1:47:24 Ben Gilbert Rolex would never three-putt.
• ▶ 1:47:30 David Rosenthal Rolex brand testimony.
• ▶ 1:47:33 David Rosenthal Okay, so, 1945, right after the war ends, is also the 40th anniversary of the founding of Wilsdorf and Davis, the ruby jubilee of the company.
• ▶ 1:47:43 David Rosenthal For the occasion, Rolex launches their finest model yet, the Datejust.
• ▶ 1:47:50 David Rosenthal And this is the first modern Rolex, still an iconic watch sold by the company today.
• ▶ 1:47:59 Ben Gilbert For a lot of people, if they don't picture a Submariner, when you hear Rolex, they picture a Datejust.
• ▶ 1:47:59 Ben Gilbert For a lot of people, if they don't picture a Submariner, when you hear Rolex, they picture a Datejust.
• ▶ 1:48:07 David Rosenthal And launched alongside the Datejust is the Jubilee Bracelet, which is the, you know, iconic beaded Rolex bracelet we all know now.
• ▶ 1:48:39 David Rosenthal Right around this same time, Rolex manufactures their 50,000th officially certified Swiss chronometer.
• ▶ 1:48:52 David Rosenthal So Hans decides that he is going to give this very special Rolex watch to the Swiss General Henri Guisson, who led Switzerland through the war.
• ▶ 1:49:23 David Rosenthal Well, Rolex is really ramping production here now, so it turns out, you know, a few months later, they make their 100,000th chronometer that they, uh, have certified.
• ▶ 1:49:35 David Rosenthal This one, Hans, goes to General Guisson, you know, newly christened Rolex convert, and says, would you please, on our behalf, offer this to your dear friend, Sir Winston Churchill.
• ▶ 1:49:50 David Rosenthal Now Winston Churchill is a Rolex man.
• ▶ 1:49:54 David Rosenthal Well, less than a year later, Rolex makes their 150,000 officially certified chronometer once again in the now, you know, new top of the line Datejust model.
• ▶ 1:50:11 David Rosenthal Eisenhower, American hero, leader of the Allied forces, architect of the Allied victory in this new world order, and Eisenhower, because his good friend Churchill wears Rolex, says, how could I not accept?
• ▶ 1:50:37 David Rosenthal And so now Dwight Eisenhower becomes a Rolex man.
• ▶ 1:50:54 Ben Gilbert And this is the very first time that Rolex kind of gets the idea of what all of their future marketing and positioning will be.
• ▶ 1:51:04 Ben Gilbert Which is those who command the world wear Rolex.
• ▶ 1:51:08 David Rosenthal So, at this time, Rolex finally brings on a third-party advertising agency, the J.
• ▶ 1:51:18 David Rosenthal Rolex and J.
• ▶ 1:51:30 David Rosenthal The tagline of the campaign is, men who guide the destinies of the world wear Rolex watches.
• ▶ 1:51:46 Ben Gilbert Men who guide the destinies of the world wear Rolex watches.
• ▶ 1:52:04 David Rosenthal Wearing Rolexes.
• ▶ 1:52:17 Ben Gilbert There's one that is, when a man has the world in his hands, you expect to find a Rolex on his wrist.
• ▶ 1:52:29 Ben Gilbert A Rolex will never change the world.
• ▶ 1:54:03 David Rosenthal The Cyclops Eye in Rolex marketing speak.
• ▶ 1:54:21 David Rosenthal And that is actually when Hans sets up the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation and puts all of his ownership of the company into it.
• ▶ 1:54:30 Ben Gilbert There was no one to pass the company to, so he creates this foundation.
• ▶ 1:54:34 David Rosenthal So his second wife, Betty, loved the Datejust, and still to this day, the Lady Datejust, I believe, is the single best-selling model in the Rolex catalog.
• ▶ 1:54:45 Ben Gilbert Well, yeah, they have, like, eight watches for men and one for women.
• ▶ 1:54:51 Ben Gilbert And, you know, women wear Submariners and stuff, too, but, like, come on.
• ▶ 1:55:38 Ben Gilbert Uh, if you're at Rolex and you're listening to this and you want to tell us, no, it really is true, hello at Acquire.fm.
• ▶ 1:56:03 Ben Gilbert But what Rolex kind of does from 1950 onward is, yeah, of course we make that, but we want to make a watch that you can wear while you're doing your extreme activity
• ▶ 1:56:27 David Rosenthal It's the Submariner, it's the Explorer, it's the GMT Master, it's the Daytona, the modern sport watches.
• ▶ 1:56:27 David Rosenthal It's the Submariner, it's the Explorer, it's the GMT Master, it's the Daytona, the modern sport watches.
• ▶ 1:56:39 David Rosenthal So Andre Heinecker, the second CEO of Rolex after Hans,
• ▶ 1:56:44 David Rosenthal Andre joined the company in 1948, right after the war, and he was a former lawyer, I believe, by training.
• ▶ 1:56:52 David Rosenthal And he first goes to South America and runs the South American market for Rolex, and then he comes back to headquarters in Geneva, and he becomes the director of marketing.
• ▶ 1:57:45 David Rosenthal All the technology and engineering and innovation that went into Rolex in the thirties to perfect the product of the wristwatch, that's no longer defensible.
• ▶ 1:57:56 David Rosenthal You mentioned Omega, but basically anybody else, certainly any other Swiss company, can make a perfectly on-parody watch to what Rolex can make at this point in time.
• ▶ 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…
• ▶ 1:58:38 David Rosenthal What Rolex now needs to do
• ▶ 1:58:42 David Rosenthal Is move beyond what the actual product is on your wrist to more, what does it say about you that you're wearing it to the brand of the company itself, what a signaling is, what it means about you.
• ▶ 1:59:16 David Rosenthal From 1953 to 19 55, Rolex, and again, Hans is still running the company, he dies in 1960, but Rolex, Hans, Andre, launch a whole suite of wild new models, very different than the Datejust and the Oyster Perpetuals that we were talking…
• ▶ 1:59:36 David Rosenthal This is the Explorer, the Turnagraph, the Submariner, the Milgauss, and the GMT Master.
• ▶ 1:59:36 David Rosenthal This is the Explorer, the Turnagraph, the Submariner, the Milgauss, and the GMT Master.
• ▶ 1:59:55 Ben Gilbert Rolex calls them professional watches, which is kind of funny because it's like the opposite of what you, oh, a professional watch you would think is like the Datejust, but they're thinking about it as more of like a professional driver, a…
• ▶ 2:00:12 Ben Gilbert You'll continue to see this in everything that is in the Rolex universe, is we don't want to be lumped into any sort of a category, so we have to refer to something entirely different, such that we can't be put into a box.
• ▶ 2:00:25 Ben Gilbert Like, they don't make spore watches.
• ▶ 2:00:27 Ben Gilbert They make professional watches.
• ▶ 2:00:28 Ben Gilbert In the same way, there's something called the Rolex Way.
• ▶ 2:00:34 Ben Gilbert Like, the Rolex Way, there's this YouTube video that they put out describing the Rolex Way, and they just list all the things that
• ▶ 2:00:41 Ben Gilbert They're not.
• ▶ 2:00:46 Ben Gilbert Everything in the Rolex universe needs to be described in a way that it's too impossible for you to describe.
• ▶ 2:00:51 Ben Gilbert It's just simply Rolex.
• ▶ 2:01:20 David Rosenthal You're not gonna be buying any Turnagraphs from authorized Rolex dealers these days.
• ▶ 2:01:28 David Rosenthal Well, it looks like the GMT Master.
• ▶ 2:01:39 David Rosenthal Around the dial, around the face of the watch, that you could use for timing different events, and the way Rolex marketed this, as this was going to be for international business people who were making international phone calls and needed…
• ▶ 2:04:51 David Rosenthal Now, the legend is that Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were working with Rolex, wearing Rolexes, summiting Everest, wearing Rolexes.
• ▶ 2:05:08 David Rosenthal And importantly, both of them become official Rolex testimonies, brand ambassadors, partners afterwards.
• ▶ 2:05:16 David Rosenthal So they will, for the rest of their lives, tell you how much they love Rolex.
• ▶ 2:05:21 Ben Gilbert However, Sir Edmund Hillary did not prefer his Rolex.
• ▶ 2:05:33 David Rosenthal And Rolex was not.
• ▶ 2:05:38 Ben Gilbert I think that it's likely whether it was on wrists or in backpacks or what the deal is, but it's just funny that there's super tightly associated with Rolex is that summiting of Everest and like, eh, they were interested.
• ▶ 2:06:32 David Rosenthal Then there's the Submariner.
• ▶ 2:06:38 Ben Gilbert If you separated Submariner from Rolex, Submariner may actually be a bigger deal.
• ▶ 2:06:38 Ben Gilbert If you separated Submariner from Rolex, Submariner may actually be a bigger deal.
• ▶ 2:06:45 Ben Gilbert Submariner is its own whole franchise.
• ▶ 2:06:53 Ben Gilbert Who's the more important, like, the sub is, if you're gonna get a Rolex,
• ▶ 2:06:53 Ben Gilbert Who's the more important, like, the sub is, if you're gonna get a Rolex,
• ▶ 2:06:59 Ben Gilbert And you're intending to have multiple, you kind of should start with the sub, because it's just so iconic.
• ▶ 2:07:15 David Rosenthal So the Submariner is the Rolex dive watch, the professional diving watch.
• ▶ 2:07:15 David Rosenthal So the Submariner is the Rolex dive watch, the professional diving watch.
• ▶ 2:07:20 David Rosenthal As we talked about, not the first dive watch that Rolex made.
• ▶ 2:07:25 Ben Gilbert What you know is the Sub is a great dive watch that Rolex makes and defines the category.
• ▶ 2:07:25 Ben Gilbert What you know is the Sub is a great dive watch that Rolex makes and defines the category.
• ▶ 2:08:05 David Rosenthal And to that point, I believe at some point Rolex starts actually testing their watches to significantly greater depth than what is advertised for this reason.
• ▶ 2:09:34 David Rosenthal And he's doing so and going down in these machines while wearing Rolex watches.
• ▶ 2:09:42 David Rosenthal Now, interestingly, there's not an actual formal relationship between Jacques and Rolex, and actually, Rolex was formally working with another undersea explorer who, uh, didn't become nearly as famous, but nonetheless, Jacques was a Rolex…
• ▶ 2:10:36 David Rosenthal A Submariner, a dive watch if you're diving.
• ▶ 2:10:57 David Rosenthal Yes, because of course Ian Fleming himself was a Rolex man.