People around the world are wondering how they’re going to get their hands on a new Rolex. The timepiece is getting difficult to come by. Rolex, with a typically mum’s-the-word-type of press department, has broken its silence with a surprising retort.

There are many Swiss watch brands around today, but one of the quietest in terms of news and press is Rolex SA, aka Rolex, owned by the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation (which is seen as a charitable trust by the government of Switzerland). Privacy is the golden rule.

For Rolex, this rings true in another way: it’s privately owned. This means that it does not have to respond to shareholders.

With this type of setup, one would never expect the prestigious brand to make a sort of general public announcement, but that’s what Yahoo! Finance is reporting has happened. The response comes from a growing number of players questioning the causes of the recent Rolex shortage.

Speculations have focused on a sort of “perfect storm“ of factors that include growing demand, a thriving resale market, and pandemic supply-chain issues that have impacted other industries as well (i.e., as in the sneaker market or the food/grocery store shortages, etc.).

Conspiracy theorists believe something else could be at play. Perhaps the company is slowly choking off the supply hoping to drive up the value of the watch per unit. 

Rolex

The company made a clarification:

“The scarcity of our products is not a strategy on our part. Our current production cannot meet the existing demand in an exhaustive way, at least not without reducing the quality of our watches – something we refuse to do as the quality of our products must never be compromised.”

The company is setting the record straight, explaining that they cannot simply just make more watches to satisfy demand without sacrificing the integrity of the watches, the very reason the product is in such high demand as it is.