Rolex, a company mostly associated with luxury and money. The company actually started from quite humble beginnings and grew to become a lavish brand for the wealthy.

Starting Out

Hans Wilsdorf, aged 24 founded a company in London whose main purpose was to create timepieces. He had the idea of having the time available on your wrist, a wristwatch, which he then created to have two purposes, elegance and reliable. To put out to the public that his watches were precise, he put in them small precise movements from a Swiss company. He wanted his company name to be short and memorable and also able to look good on watch faces. This is a quote from Hans himself.

“I tried combining the letters of the alphabet in every possible way. This gave me some hundred names, but none of them felt quite right. One morning, while riding on the upper deck of a horse-drawn omnibus along Cheapside in the City of London, a genie whispered ‘Rolex’ in my ear.” 

Rolex stuck and is still with us today.

Growth

Rolex had received quite a lot of fame by acquiring certificates which stated that the company had great precision in their watches, which boosted the reputation of the company by miles. After this change they moved to Geneva in Switzerland and were officially registered in 1920. They created the worlds first water and dustproof watch known as the Oyster which featured a hermetically sealed case. A great promotion to the company was of the Oyster watches being used in the first ever flight over Everest, a memorable moment.

Where they are now

For sure we can all say that they have come very, very far from where they started out. They have continued to try their very best and surely have come out to succeed against other companies. They are known to be associated with wealth and often are a hint that someone with a lot of spare money is there if you do see someone with the watch. I will know show you the price of the cheapest Rolex watch I could find on the site.

I found an Oyster Perpetual selling for  £1,949  and it is not even a nice watch. So imagine how much the good watches will cost! definitely a fortune.

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