When Does Rolex Raise Prices? Complete Guide
Rolex is not a direct-to-consumer company. Instead, it has hundreds of official Rolex retailers that sell Rolex watches under a retailer agreement/contract. Rolex supplies watches to its retailers and they sell them to final customers. Rolex sets the official recommended retail prices that retailers are expected to sell them for. This is similar to how pricing of cars and manyother items work around the world.
But as you may have mentioned, Rolex official retail prices for Rolex watches have not been the same over the last couple of years. Like most companies, Rolex needs to raise its prices due to inflation, increased costs, and for a number of other reasons. When Rolex raises its prices, it also raises the wholesale prices for its retailers.
So how often does Rolex raise its prices?
The answer is that there is no fixed answer to this. But in the last couple of years, Rolex has increased its prices at least once a year. The price increases vary depending on a number of factors and raising the prices is not always justified. But with increased uncertainty in the world, and an increase in cost in many areas within the production chain, Rolex has found it to be justified and necessary. Increase in fuel costs, energy costs, shortages of metal, and many other things due to the Coronavirus also meant that it was necessary for Rolex to raise prices more frequently than it has before.
If we go back 5 years or even further, Roelx has not historically raised its prices every year so it is not a rule. But in times when the uncertainty is high, the production costs keep climbing, and inflation keeps rising, then it is understandable that Rolex will raise its prices on a more regular basis.
Does Rolex raise its prices worldwide?
The answer to this question is, usually but not always. When Rolex announces a price increase, it is usually applied worldwide. But in some cases, it is not. This usually has to do with the currency in a certain country becoming much weaker against the CHF.
Bear in mind that Rolex retailers, regardless of the country they are in, pay Rolex in CHF. And so, for example, if the dollar is substantially weakened against the CHF, it will ultimately mean that the wholesale prices for retailers will increase. And as a result, it will reduce the retailers’ margins.
To combat this, Rolex may apply local price increases in some cases when they deem it necessary. In this cases, it will generally only be for certain countries with a specific currency. There is no fixed answer to when Rolex will adjust the price in a specific country as it depends on a variety of global factors. But it’s not something that Rolex does that often.
But what is interesting is that when Rolex deems it necessary, it may in practice mean that Roelx can increase the prices twice in one year in certain countries. First, they may announce the official price increase that applied worldwide. But if there’s still an imbalance between the retail price and the increase in cost for the retailer, Rolex may then announce another price increase in that particular country.
Does Rolex increase the price for all models equally?
In general, no. We saw a prime example of this when Rolex increased its prices in 2022. For this year, Rolex only increased the prices minimally for the more expensive full-preciuous metal models. But for the most popular stainless steel professional models, Rolex increased the prices substantially by up to 10% which is a substantial price increase.
With that said, Rolex’s price increases have also been a way to balance the discrepancy between the recommended retail price and the prices for certain models on the secondhand market. For example, if a steel Daytona sells for three times the recommended retail price, Rolex could technically raise its price for this model by 3x and still have no problem selling all the watches that they make.
But of course, it would be difficult to justify this type of price increase by adapting to the secondhand market in this way. So with this said, Rolex raised the price more substantially for the most popular sports watches, but not anywhere near where the market deems them to be worth.
Rolex has done general price increases before where they increase the price by, for example, 4% across the board for all models. But as the secondhand market has gotten so skewed in terms of price, Rolex has slightly adjusted its strategy in the last couple of years to adapt.
How much does Rolex increase its prices?
A normal price increase from Rolex is usually a few percent. Around 5% seems to have been a standard number that Rolex has used in the last couple of years, with the exception of 2022, in recent time.
But with that said, how much the price increase is in percentages varies depending on a number of factors, as discussed above. If the cost for Rolex has increased dramatically due to different global factors, it may be necessary for Rolex to increase its prices more. But if the global market is relatively stable, they may only raise its prices on that particular year by a few percent.
When does Rolex increase its prices?
Normally, Rolex increases its prices in the beginning of the year. Price increases usually come in effect in the start of January. However, with that said, there’s nothing that stops them from increasing the price during other times of the year. It has happened before and will most likely happen again. But in general, the beginning of the year is when Roelx raises its prices.
