Comments:
Rolex Axes “Carl F. Bucherer” Watch Brand per BILANZ
After ~25 years of losing money, Rolex has decided to the brand loose, they aren't a charity after all. Did it have to be this way? The Parmigiani brand has recently become profitable, so nothing is impossible.
I considered the brand multiple times , for some reason I could never pull the trigger.
Ah, so it’s your fault then!
I’ve heard the same from others, nice watches that no one actually buys.
Sad News thought their Heritage World Time was Really Nice
Source: Monochrome Watches
I came close
To buying the Manero flyback in petroleum blue. The choices back then were quite limited but the bulky size and extremely odd placement of the springbar holes made it a hard sell. Would be interesting if the extra resources get reallocated to rolex production, not that I care as I'm not in the target demographics but that's the philanthropist in me!
I've seen an *unsubstantiated* claim somewhere that 70 of the ~100 people affected are going to be moved to new positions at the Bulle plant
There always seems to be hope for a turnaround.
CFB may have been more of an expensive passion project than a profit center. Still, it's frustrating to see a watch brand disappear.
I applaud Rolex for pulling the plug. There’s so many more brands that are hardly relevant that I’d like to see leave the market. A good clean-up will benefit the other brands in a down-market.
A horological masterpiece the model on your wrist. Good sounding minute repeater with tourbillon and peripheral rotor.
So Rolex is left with a fairly integrated manufacture that makes tourbillons, minute repeaters, and perpetual calendars...
... and with no brand attached. Could we be on the cusp of truly complicated watchmaking from the Rolex brand itself?
Best,
Tim
CFB repeaters were by Les Cercle Des Horologers; and QP is likely Dubois Depraz based on the layout and pusher corrector locations.
It's not totally important who the original supplier was for each element of the watches
Obviously, CFB didn't make every mechanism it branded. At CFB, the institutional knowledge of working with those movements is there, and there is plenty of room to follow that work. The THA catalog of complications also includes many 1990s and 2000s mechanisms beyond the scope of Rolex's usual catalog. Working with a supplier often is a stepping stone to self-sufficiency. AP didn't design the JLC 920, but it's been built in-house at Audemars for decades. IWC and UN didn't design the 1990s chiming mechanisms, but they became part of the fabric of their constructions. I can't imagine Rolex working with a supplier on a prestige watch, but I can imagine it picking up where the supplier left off.
Best,
Tim
Best,
Tim