In the world of Swiss watchmaking, Rolex is as close to a sovereign power as one can find. While its watches are scrutinized down to the last crownCrown The knob on the outside of the watch that you typically use to either wind the mainspring or set the time [Learn More] guard by collectors, the brand itself remains shrouded in a kind of cultivated mystery. Privately owned by the Hans WilsdorfHans Wilsdorf Hans Wilsdorf was a German-born British watchmaker and businessman who co-founded the luxury Swiss watch brand Rolex in 1905. Wilsdorf was born in Germany in 1881 and moved to Switzerland in 1905, where he established a company with his brother-in-law, Alfred Davis, to import high-quality Swiss timepieces. In 1908, Wilsdorf registered the trademark "Rolex" and began producing his own line of wristwatches. Foundation (read up about that right here), Rolex doesn’t publish financials, doesn’t answer investor calls (it has none), and doesn’t cater to public disclosure. It is, in the literal sense, accountable only to itself.
Every year, when the Swiss watch export statistics are released, a curious ritual unfolds among industry insiders. They pore over dry charts and customs data like tea leaves, trying to divine how much of the market Rolex has managed to swallow whole, because Rolex never says so itself. It doesn’t need to. But thanks to a combination of production estimates, customs declarations, retail sales trends, and the obsessive documentation habits of the watch community, we can make some educated guesses. And those guesses paint a staggering picture. Let’s piece it all together here, and of course, keep in mind, these are educated guesses, not facts.
By most respected estimates, and anchored by the hard data published by Switzerland’s own Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry (FH), Rolex is responsible for roughly 30 percent of the total value of Swiss watch exports. That would put its 2023 revenue somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 10.5 billion Swiss francs. That’s not retail mark-up either; that’s wholesale revenue, what Rolex actually receives when it ships a watch to a boutique or authorized dealer. As I do not have access to the latest and greatest data points (nobody really does, I believe), let’s go with what we knew up to 2023 for the rest of this exercise.
Rolex total production for 2023 is estimated at around 1.2 million watches, a number that’s said to have remained pretty consistent over recent years. That translates to an average wholesale price per watch of roughly CHF 8,500–9,000. Compare that to mass-market quartz watches or even many Swiss competitors operating in the CHF 1,000–3,000 bracket, and the scale becomes clear. Rolex isn’t just moving more watches than its rivals (though I’d argue it doesn’t really have any rivals at this point), it’s doing so at a significantly higher price point, and with profit margins to match.
Financial analysts estimate Rolex’s operating margin at around 40 percent, nearly double that of many publicly traded luxury firms. It achieves this through an almost religious devotion to secrecy and vertical integration. Rolex makes its own cases, its own dials, its own alloys, even its own gold. Yes, it owns its own foundry. The brand’s four production facilities in Switzerland run like monasteries: closed to the public, tight-lipped, and absolutely focused on quality and consistency.
As previously detailed here on DE GRIFF, all of this power and profitability exists without a single annual report. Rolex doesn’t disclose revenue and doesn’t issue guidance. No Earnings calls for them to prepare for. It has no shareholders to placate and simply no quarterly targets to hit. It has, in a sense, opted out of the entire global system of transparency, and despite that (or because of it) continues to outperform nearly every other brand out there, not limited to the watch world.
This is very much on brand with everything you, the consumer, knows about the brand if you really think about it. The brand doesn’t explain itself, not even to its customers. It doesn’t need to. If you want a Rolex, you get on a list. Yes, you. If you want to know how many they made, you guess. If you want to know how much money they made, you extrapolate from customs filings and analyst estimates and whisperings from Geneva.
Yet somehow, this mystery machine has become the most successful luxury watchmaker on Earth.
So, based on this little exercise here and what I could find online, Rolex makes an estimated 10 to 10.5 billion Swiss francs a year in revenue, more than any other Swiss watch brand by a very, very, long shot. To put it in perspective, Omega, a household name in its own right and the industry’s “strong” number two, brings in around 2.5 to 2.6 billion francs. That’s barely a quarter of what Rolex makes. And it only gets smaller from there. Most other Swiss brands don’t even crack a billion. In fact, out of the more than 300 Swiss watchmakers still in business, the vast majority are tiny players in comparison.
Ten and a half billion francs a year, made in silence, without a word to Wall Street.