Review: ‘The Making Of A Status Symbol, A Business History of Rolex’ Translated To English For The First Time

In 1966, advertising executives tasked with creating marketing campaigns for Rolex advised the Swiss brand that its messaging required a change. A creeping cynicism and shifting cultural values meant the world leaders and powerful political figures it had been invoking as the ideal wearers of its watches were no longer revered with the same awe. Rolex needed a new kind of hero.
“We believe that men today no longer have the same admiration for statesmen,” executives at ad agency J. Walter Thompson said in the memo outlining the suggested new vision.

“We have based this campaign on the idea that each man can link himself with the adventure and prestige that a Rolex offers because, in his own thoughts, he dreams of one day climbing mountains or running businesses.” The ad men’s idea became the basis for a new communications strategy that began the next year and continues to this day. Shifting the focus away from the precision and water-resistant attributes of Rolex watches and the powerful world leaders that wore them and towards examples of successful individuals in sports, adventuring and business, (and later culture and arts), would help propel and eventually cement Rolex into the top spot among Swiss brands, according to Pierre-Yves Donzé, the author of The Making of a Status Symbol, A Business History of Rolex. 

The book, first published in 2024 in French and now available in English for the first time, is likely the most thorough and exhaustive academic examination of the business narrative, key events, and corporate decisions over the past 120 years that have vaulted Rolex to a place among the biggest and most powerful brands in the world.

It’s no small achievement. Rolex, famously or infamously, depending on your point of view, has no public archives and shares only limited information with journalists and researchers. The company, which is controlled by a trust foundation in Geneva named for founder Hans Wilsdorf, fiercely guards and controls the historical narrative surrounding the brand and its unparalleled success. That consistent company message, first honed in the 1960s, is best summed up, Donzé says, as an entity that produces ”exceptional watches, made by an exceptional man, for an exceptional customer.”

But how did Rolex actually become this exceptional symbol and giant of the Swiss watch industry, accounting for about one-third of total sales, according to analyst estimates, and producing more than one million watches per year? Donzé, a professor of business history at Osaka University in Japan, scoured municipal, cantonal and national public records in Switzerland and archives from government, business, and academic sources in the U.K., U.S. and other nations to produce what, he says, is the first academic and fulsome business history of Rolex based entirely on archived materials. “Even if I have never been to the Rolex archives, one can find documents about the company elsewhere because Rolex was in constant contact with so many institutions, governments, trade associations, and other companies that you can always find the name Rolex,” Donzé says in an interview.

The research spans the history of Wilsdorf’s life and career, as well as the company’s continued operation and success following his death in 1960. It uses archived materials, including corporate registry filings, business records, patents, union documents, and communications, as well as historical newspaper and magazine articles and advertising materials, to offer new insights into Wilsdorf and Rolex’s early business history in both the U.K. and Switzerland.

It definitively shows that Rolex’s move to Switzerland from the U.K. in the late 1910s was driven by British tariffs and taxes that would bring the company closer to its important partners and suppliers. It documents key business relationships and investments, most notably with Aegler SA, the movement manufacturer in Bienne that was deeply critical to the company’s success while remaining a separate, family-owned company until it was finally purchased by Rolex in 2004.

Via patent filings and business acquisition records, the book records Wilsdorf’s fevered search for water-resistant and automatic winding innovations and technologies that resulted in the ‘Oyster Perpetual’ watch case and self-winding movement that came to define Rolex products. But it also notes a dearth of patent filings and innovations related to mechanical watches between 1960 and 1990 as the company, with its lineup of oyster-cased watch models including the Datejust, DayDate, Explorer, GMT Master, and Daytona that had been well determined and decided upon, changed focus to galvanizing the desirability of a Rolex watch using examples of successful individuals who wore them amid their extraordinary lives.

It was during this period of crisis for the Swiss watch industry, particularly in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, as quartz movement technology disrupted brands from Omega to Jaeger-LeCoultre, to Tissot and Zenith, that Rolex, under the direction of Chief Executive Officer André Heiniger and with marketing and communications led by the J. Walter Thompson agency, became the world number one.

Drawing on historical documents from COSC, Swiss watch export data, intercompany communications between Rolex executives and suppliers, partners, and ad firms, as well as patent filings and business records, Donzé documents how Rolex in the post-war period recognized the U.S. as its most promising and important market. The brand’s new campaign, featuring extraordinary men living successful and compelling lives, appealed directly and deeply to the aspirational desires of the rapidly growing U.S. middle class.

It’s important to note that Rolex was, by nearly all accounts, non-existent in the U.S. market until after World War II. This changed dramatically, under the direction of Rolex CEO Heiniger from 1964 to 1992, as Donzé shows the brand increased U.S. sales five-fold in the 1970s alone. Underscoring the shift, the Geneva-based company paid $15 million for a building on Fifth Avenue in New York in 1977, a decision that the firm’s directors explained ”was a sign of their confidence in the expansion of the U.S. market.”

Rolex’s headlong expansion during the post-war period stands in sharp contrast to the fortunes of almost all of its rivals, particularly Omega, which had long been the dominant Swiss brand. Between 1964 and 1988, the workforce at Geneva-based Montres Rolex SA increased by an astonishing 95% while the Swiss watch industry as a whole lost two-thirds of jobs in the same period. Donzé’s book shows that Rolex, which had moved on from trying to distinguish the quality of its watches from rivals to the quality of its clients, was working from a completely different song sheet than its competitors.

To be sure, Rolex did not completely cease extolling the attributes of its products during this era, but it did relinquish competing in chronometry and other competitions that had once been a key pillar of its advertising. The exceptional nature of Rolex watches faded significantly from communications as Rolex became the first brand to place social distinction at the heart of its marketing strategy, which aimed to make Rolex the embodiment of individual success. To demonstrate this principle, Donzé cites René Dentan, the head of Rolex’s U.S. subsidiary, who said in 1980 that Rolex’s new partners “must be people whose prestige is parallel to ours.”

Golfer Arnold Palmer was among the first of these new ambassadors (soon to be known as Rolex Testimonees) who often appeared in ads without a watch on his wrist. It was the idea of Palmer’s individual success that was the message. Skier Jean-Claude Killy, tennis great John Newcombe, golfer Nancy Lopez, Formula 1 driver Jackie Stewart, and Spanish opera singer Placido Domingo were among the early individuals tapped to represent the Rolex brand. Many of these connections were made by American businessman, sports agent, and founder of the International Management Group (IMG), Mark H. McCormack, who himself appeared in Rolex advertising materials celebrating his extraordinary jet-setting corporate success.

A Rolex promotion from 1984 lists McCormack’s varied and wide achievements and interests. Only in the last paragraph of the dense ad copy does it mention his watch. ”As a man of accomplishment, Mark McCormack is well-matched with his Rolex. As a man in nearly perpetual motion, he is well served by its reliability,” it says. Amid this new thrust in marketing and communications, Donzé documents Rolex’s sales growth during the period, driven by rapid gains in the U.S. and Japanese markets. By 1987, the U.S. luxury watch market, that being watches costing more than $3,500 at the time, was worth between $800 million and $1 billion. It was dominated by 10 Swiss brands, with Rolex accounting for half.

The U.S.-led growth is reflected in overall sales figures during the defining period between 1960 and 1990. Omega’s annual sales were estimated to be about CHF 30 million in 1960, while Rolex sales, combined with sister brand Tudor, were about CHF 38 million, placing the Rolex and Omega brands at a similar level. A decade later, Rolex sales jumped to about CHF 100 million, according to Donzé, with Omega trailing at CHF 65 million. By 1980, Rolex sales surged to CHF 470 million, with Omega behind at CHF 370 million. And it was during the Reagan-era, consumer materialism–focused 80s that Rolex definitively won the battle with annual revenue soaring to CHF 1 billion by 1987, while Omega sales managed about CHF 530 million that year, the book shows.

A Swiss national born in the watchmaking hub of La Chaux-de-Fonds, Donzé is a prolific author and has penned a host of books on the watch industry, including A Business History Of The Swatch Group in 2014 and The Business of Time: A Global History of the Watch Industry, published in 2022. With The Making of a Status Symbol, the business professor has finally turned his academic research prowess to the undisputed giant of the industry, documenting its measured rise to global dominance. 

If lacking, at times, in narrative excitement and suffering from an inability to bring the human and psychological characteristics of Wilsdorf, Heiniger and other key Rolex business figures to life, the book is a vital work in compiling and conveying historical archive materials charting the path of the most important institution in the watch industry. It’s a must-have for any library with a section dedicated to The Crown.

For more information on The Making of a Status Symbol, A Business History of Rolex visit the Manchester University Press website.

​Hodinkee 

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