For those who want more information on the court case mentioned in the article (from 2021).
https://omegaforums.net/threads/i-d...-what-am-i-missing.95204/page-37#post-1720220
https://omegaforums.net/threads/maj...-directly-to-grey-market.127461/#post-1722240
This is kind of old news. It will be interesting to see what will happen if a trial actually happens. I do not think this will ever go to trial. CD Peacock will write some checks to its former employees and all of this will quietly go away.
Rolex USA might even help them out, as the bad publicity will likely rub off on the Crown.
gatorcpa
Grey market is not the flipper market 2 different things.
Is this aimed at my comment?
I was trying to point out that the huge premiums that these new Rolex models go for on the grey market will result in individuals who have direct access to new Rolex’s (sales people / managers of AD’s, etc) to sell these Rolex’s to the grey market dealers for a premium over MSRP. The grey market dealers will then add on a further sum to cover their overhead and profit to sell to their retail customers.
Or have I misunderstood what’s going on?
Grey Market is not the flipper market, you are confusing terms.
The Grey market is watches sold with no warranty. These watches are on the market as dealers are given a yearly allotment of watches and sometimes they cannot sell them all, then they sell them to the grey market dealers at a large discount as this is the only way to dump these watches., this is against their dealer agreements. These watches sell at discount and have no warranty.
Rolex started constraining production about 8 years ago to stop this, and they succeeded, creating a different problem for them.
The flipper market is another beast, this is people that buy expressly to resell the watches over MSRP, sometimes this involves sales people. This happens when production is constrained below market demand, and happens on some models.
These are 2 totally different terms.
My favorite quote from the article:
“The scarcity of our products is not a strategy on our part,” Rolex says.
Perhaps not, but it’s hard to believe that Rolex isn’t well aware of the number of its watches that are disappearing out the back doors of ADs and reappearing on the websites of grey market sellers at a significant premium. It’s also hard to believe that Rolex has done much to stop that practice.
