Former AUTHORISED ROLEX DEALER tells all - Watch People's Exclusive Interview

[Music] so it's a warm welcome to stephen johnson from carlisle steven is a former authorized dealer and has very kindly agreed to speak to us uh stephen welcome to the show it's actually a long time since we've spoken how are you my friend i'm all right mate good to hear from you again um yeah how are you i'm very well thank you stephen um i know the viewers are going to really be interested to hear what you've got to say as a former authorized rolex dealer i know you're still active up there in carlisle firstly um tell us a little bit about yourself mate and your business yeah so i am a third generation jobson my grandfather started the business he was a watchmaker at the time in 1960 making a 60 years established this year and he started the business repairing clocks and then uh repaired the watch and sold it and then bought another couple sold them and that's how jobs and jewelers really became dropshipping jewelers so literally from the from the repair side to the selling and then in the 70s we we took on rolex as an agency and we had them up to 2012. what does it take to become an authorized rolex dealer then and again i can't speak about my grandfather or my father but then it was you know basically an application form and seeing if you're qualified to do it i'm going to say i think the thing with my grandfather was he had quite a nice big premises two floors and he had the passion for watchmaking which obviously rolex being swiss brand we're always about like um love the brand uh we're nowhere near what they are now but i actually think it was a toss-up between rolex and hoya at the time and to which one he could afford to go on and he chose rolex which was obviously the wise decision yeah i mean it's which is now tag oh yeah yeah it's typical of the sort of kind of business that i grew up and fell in love with the family owned and run all fours dealers it's very much changed nowadays isn't it yeah it was um i mean we parted ways of rolex 2012 which we'll talk about in a bit but again it's not easy um and again a lot of big brands these days whether it's in the wash industry or you know maybe the motor industry the demands that they're asking for is so difficult to reach when you are just a family business as opposed to a multinational yeah and i feel like the brands like rolex were built from independent retailers like ourselves um and i've kind of forgotten a bit about that a lot of them have gone by the wayside over the years haven't they yeah it's just as i say i mean you can't argue with the power of the brands that they know what they're doing um but i feel like a lot of them not just to say not just watch industry i think brands themselves have forgotten about the people who made them what they are so why did you lose your authorized dealer status so in 2012 is when we officially parted ways with them and in 2010 i believe it was rolex changed the factories and they developed the new um the new service center factory and now years gone by we were always allowed to have a dial center we had a date just in stock we wanted a blue dial not a silver dial they would send us a dial and we would change it on site we had two watching well one watchmaker on site was authorized rolex and we actually had another gentleman and he would train to protect the leap so we had two watchmakers on site we could change the dials over and send the old one back now a lot of times they didn't take the old dials back for whatever reason but we had paths available and we could just turn them to the customer in 2010 or 11 when they did this service center my father went down to do this course and for the new uh watch medical criteria he looked at it and thought we're gonna we're gonna pay for this soon i think yeah because it was impressive really impressive and we basically parted ways um with them because they had new demands you know you see the new the new boutiques that they have in all the authorized dealers and and to watch the switzerland groups they are impressive um and the bottom line is we we couldn't afford to keep them was it about was it about quotas how much he was selling so basically they wanted and they do want all the authorized dealers to be the same now we're up in cumbria which is in lake district in carlisle and our population compared to a manchester or a london or a newcastle it's nowhere near the population and because you're not allowed to sell them online or ship them it was really restricted i mean we used to sell about 100 new rolex a year um at a maximum and we used to stock about 40 and every month you would get an allocation and you would pick out what you wanted um and you would continue there but having 40 watches and stuff so having 100 in stock was a minimum and then it would change to 120 and it was just unfortunately for us it just wasn't feasible we're a small family business and like many other small family businesses who have parted the ways of rolex and we just couldn't afford the what would be a million pounds to keep the brand yeah and this was the refit and the relocation and this is almost a this is almost a family a d coal isn't it really because uh it's a similar story right across the country i know that the all five dealers that me and my dad um used to visit you know they were family owned and that's all gone as well yeah i mean it's you know it's it's one of them things where entwisted start you know they lost a little bit of sight we are well were until my father passed away last year we were still watchmakers on site you know we'd accredited with rolex and we had you know from the family run jeans of it all we did everything we'd already had a move when we were 40 years in business because it asked us to move to a better location or a different location which actually turned out to be better but then they wanted to move again and you know you kind of take a step back and you go you know wait this is our business not yours you know we we are happy to be a partnership an affiliate with such a strong brand but this is we do sell other brands as well and we do diamond rings it's not just rollback shop this is we're being dictated to by one brand in here and we can't still upset about you know outside of our region really unless somebody travels what about quotes and you say um he was given a choice of what you could buy each month give me an idea of what that might have been back then yeah so i mean give me an idea kind of a false figure in 2012 because we were trying to buy everything because we've been given a um a letter of termination i think it was about six weeks i think maybe it was um so we had another month worth of thing but we used to get our location set through to us it had all the models that were available in the factory um and you could take what you wanted i mean i do remember times when the ceramic gmt master came out i think they're about four thousand pounds um almost six six one three alone and it was i think there's four or five in the back safe you know but we'd always take a sports model um what about we take all the sports models but we take the day just and again the day dates were always a always been the kicker for us because we used to have to have one in stock a jets and the ladies we used to have to have 118 carat and then we could sometimes have that watch for three years yeah that's insane what about what about what is like the daytona i mean how many of those would you get a year so a year we used to get five daytons a year and we used to get a daytona allocation uh because the model number will be on the on the list and we wouldn't know if it was a white or a black one so we had a book of about 50 to 60 customers and ironically obviously it was like black dial white dial which one which one and we will go through the list and form the next person on the list and then that page will get ripped out they would have their watch and we'll go to the next person and then they would have i've got a white one here now what a black one so you go into the next person and sometimes you'd reach number 25 on the list now the funny thing with the daytona was when the lists were created and the watches were three thousand pound now sometimes by the time these customers got these watches they were five and six thousand pounds and they would say oh no i put my name down the window three grand and i've got a priceless sitting in front of me now in 1992 i think the daytona was 2200 pounds um yeah 16520 in 1982 and retail was 2 250 pounds so a question that's going to be maybe a little bit difficult for you to answer but i hope you can answer it as honestly as you can i mean what do you think about today's um flippers as it as it were and we all know what flipper means um do you believe and did you knowingly supply people that were going to flip their watches was your waiting list 100 um supplied and uh as it should have been how did you work did you have preferred clients tell me about that so we we had uh what i would call an honest list you know if you wanted to put your name down for a daytona you would you would be added to the book and you would be number whatever was next in line and the problem with this being once we got to 60 people there was no point in taking any more names because there was too much demand and we had a system where that was the case now don't get me wrong there's nothing like the demand for these watches now as i mentioned we used to have there was a time i remember there was there's four or five ceramic daytonas in the back safe uh sorry sonic gmt masters so the lists were there although it was rare for that to happen we did have some marriage in the window and you know by dave stoner never went in the window still it was the only watch that still never hit the window um and uh and we just put names down and we phoned them the next on the list um if somebody came in and spent a lot of money with us you know it was could it be on the daytona list well you know we've got 50 people however if we phone the first 10 no one answers then i'll give you a call but it wasn't a straight jump list but it was nothing like it is now i do appreciate that yeah i know things have changed i mean what do you make of um the question i asked you about do you think or in your experience at least um and it's just your opinion how do you think that today's modern day dealers are supplying these watches do you think they fulfill these lists fairly do you think they knowingly supply the flippers what's your the problem the problem i find with this um with the authorized dealer is a lot of people are saying you have to be a customer of ours you have to be a customer you know and if it means you buying a datejust which now aren't under this price they're actually going over this price to get on their list of people who is a recognized customer they know fine well you're only going to sell that watch to get on the list of the preferred watches so they're creating their own you have to buy this to buy this list which is that's only encouraging the flipper if in my opinion you know if people would just to be on the list can i get one of these um they i i have a feeling they know a lot of times who's keeping these watches and flipping them and especially um nowadays when you know the likes of the daytona list i mentioned you know people got on these daytona lists not because they wanted to steal they told me because sometimes they wanted to make what was about a thousand pound profit at the time you know knew the case and then they would never have another one of us you know this would go on so you've had your daytona you've sold it well that's sold now so you can't have another one of them you know people getting two three four five six submariners there's no way they don't know what they're doing so i'm sorry to kind of push you on this one stephen but so in your opinion in in a word yes or no would you consider do you believe that ids are deliberately supplying flippers uh would that be a yes it's a yes no question i think yes they know who's selling them on but no i don't believe that they're getting everything um as it were you know they can't possibly i think it's a rotation um status with the sales people and i think they get their preferred customers which i believe is now a thing not a list and whether they're driven by targets not i don't know but if they know one of their customers is going to come through straight away and pick a watch up they're going to offer it to them or for somebody else i think yeah i think i think the thing that's on everyone's mind you know from outside the authorized dealership world if you like is that look if you're if you're an ad and you get a daytona um and let's just for arguments say the list price at the time was let's just say 10 000. um why would you as an authorized dealer sell that to someone on the list for ten thousand when you've got another list the group of friends you could bring up and sell it for 11 000. that's that's the question that people are going to want to probably have answered yeah this is what we we do here this all the time you know how can i get one you know we're like we we try and deal with the classic stuff but we do appreciate there's a demand for new and with a premium on it so we don't go out looking for them um and you know as a salesperson in a jewelers who's potentially not on commission and they have a friend who will give them a thousand pounds for free it's a tough carrot not to take and but the problem i think with the aeds is they haven't the guys in the shop they haven't got a say in what their salaries are they get paid a salary and unfortunately as corrupt as it is i think if they can make a bit on the side they probably will so you think that you think that something like a family business where you know if i'm buying watches i know what i'm buying i know who my list are they don't have that they have the managers which is fair enough but i don't believe that they're doing it fairly going back to the waiting list um which has seemingly been dumped for this preferred client system whatever that means um what are you making out i mean hasn't it really been like that all along in any case the favored list again with not having the agency i don't know i mean me personally the only the only watch i've ever put my name down for was the sea-dweller anniversary when it came out i have the submariner kermit i've had that since i was 21 and i wanted the anniversary sea dweller and put my name down the list just put my name down and i got a phone call and said you've got your watch now at the time i didn't have the money in my bank account so i moved it from the business account didn't try and hide the fact i was a jewelers or anything it's for me so i paid him immediately because he asked me that day so i paid them for the business account before i got chance to pick the watch up they told me i couldn't have it because i was a jewelers and they couldn't sell it to trade now i put my name down the list i wanted it from a collection i want a 50 anniversary i've still got kermit 15 years ago and i even told them to keep the card for three years if they wanted to and they wouldn't sell me it but knowingly i could have snuck myself around the back door then after friend of mine picked it up and been sneaky yeah and it would have sold it to him and ironically that watch did sell before i even got the refund i know that for a fact because i know who picked it up so i don't agree with the corrupt side of this at the end of the day they're still getting retail money for the watches they're still making their full margin um and if they want to look out in the second-hand market for watches that pop up they could do that very easily they're all available um on different platforms and if they wanted to do some research they could probably find the watches and find the people who were selling them one and quite quite easily if they were really strict about it but they're not probably the the most difficult question i'm going to ask you mate and this hasn't been rehearsed so you don't know this one he's coming but what was your profit margin on a brand new rolex when i first started out um probably 15 years ago i think i think it was 37 and then it dropped slightly um to just above 30 on a rolex okay i mean rolex is a brand name i run it ironically as a book here from 1992 and which i tell you about which is the daytona price it actually has in the in the book the cost wholesale price expat and then the retail price and the daytona do you want to take a guess what the daytona cost was in 1992 to me as an authorized dealer eighteen hundred a thousand and sixty four pounds plus back one thousand and sixty four pound plus fat wow in 1992 and it reached over 22.50 now funny thing was i actually when it came with the business and started gathering momentum i asked my father i said you know do you why didn't you keep one of these watches one a year um and the problem was the small independent dealers we actually couldn't afford to do it um to keep one back you know that was the stuff that was selling um and also he had customers for them imagine if we'd kept every submariner for 40 years over the years well that's the benefit of hindsight made but we could all we could all look back and you know it wasn't the fact that you didn't want to do it yeah the bill was so big every month with rolex we just couldn't afford to do it now it's a brand that i've been in love with all my life but you know yeah in recent months i have to be honest um and regular views to my channel will probably see that's quite apparent it's it's a it's a love-hate relationship now it's a it's a watch that i still love it's a brand i still love but i have to be honest and say as a company i've fell out of love with them a little bit over the last few months for varying reasons what do you see or where do you see rolex are trying to take their brand right now in 2020 um i mean i kind of know where you're coming from i mean for me it's a lifestyle that you know i've grown up on rolex watches you know they were kind when we had agencies we would go to the ryder cup the british open we would get gifts off them for being there you know they've been very good to us in our lifestyle and they still are you know possibly if not up there with the top five runs worldwide of any brand you know you see coca-cola you know people know what that is you know rolex you know they've really really dominated a a powerful brand but in doing so i have this thumbs up a little people on the way maybe but the the problem i think is is that owning the rolex used to be something that very few could do and now i think everybody's possible to do it um and there's more pre-owned dealers than ever before we always always dealt with pre-owned with in 40 years you know a grandfather would always honor back um the person's price if you bought a daytona steel and you want to steal yellow he would give you back what he paid for it and that went through the datejust range anything all the way up because the achievement back then was i want an 18 karat gold one yeah um so you know pre-owned has always been massive for rolex but i think in recent years have they changed enough no but if it isn't broke don't fix it and what about you look at this what about the plan what about the brand itself i mean i i've said that i believe that rolex are perhaps even trying to maybe um leave behind some of their more traditional working to middle class customer base and push on from that um and try and get into the the patek market the tech customer market um i think if they were doing that i think the retail price would change massively you know but as long as watches are still selling for potentially double over this price and they're not charging that i don't think they can do that really and i don't think i think they produce too many to get to that protect market um i think they'll always be a gap you know if someone's got a rolex but they want to be something different i think they're going to go to a patek or another rpk um i think rolex is strong in volume um very good residual and people still know the brand it's it's a nice thing to hold as a rolex fortune but the brand itself i think they've definitely forgotten the fundamentals of who who made them and how they became what they were and i was that was family businesses yeah exactly what do you make of the uh finally i guess for now unless there's anything you want to add um you may know or you may not know steven i've been campaigning now for some time for the uh um lost and stolen register to be reinstated to members of the public you know from a health and safety viewpoint as much as anything what do you make of the cessation of the lost and stolen register and how useful was it to you as a as a former authorized dealer a hundred percent i mean the watch was still registered you know that actually changed just before we parted ways and they didn't do it anymore and we couldn't believe it we're like why are you getting rid of this if someone's lost a water stolen a watch you should be you know authorized to help them out try and find it you know why why get rid of a department which was so useful now was it being misused possibly and was it being abused possibly i don't know but you know to get rid of that which which was a useful tool and again i was becoming in the business that was something i just touched the base with at the start um but i think for them not that they don't care about the pre-owned market but also why would they um yeah which is again not when you say changing brand that's where i think they are like we'll sell on you and that's all we care about whereas you know we don't have the brand haven't had the brand for a long time and it was upsetting leaving them and it wasn't an easy process to leave me um but we've adapted i still wear a rolex of the day um because i do i love the brand but you know it does it change a little bit the fact that we had to part ways the way we did it's it's not my sit on but it's still an amazing brand but they have to not be after the service i suppose yeah the after service because even now we still sell watches to send what watches to rollers to be serviced for customers or if we do a pre-owned one that needs the attention it needs we will send it to rolex and you know the amount of times that you know they won't just do a service the bracelet needs to change it's not that bad you know the service center definitely increased massively on their their kind of level of expectation of how someone should wear a watch you know yeah wear a watch scratch it enjoy it but you know steel bracelet now is what 1500 pounds more i would think yeah yeah come on i had a watch last week that i've been in for a rolex service and i mean it come back in you know like brand new like they do but they're doing amazing they're doing an amazing job amazing job the only issue i took up with the with the quote really was that they wanted to supply a new bracelet on the watch and i couldn't find a fault with the bracelet apart from the crown the coronet on the rear of the the clasp was a little bit warm it wasn't the best it was probably seven out of ten yeah but that was a new clasp not a whole new bracelet if it needed it yeah yeah but you know look they do what they do they sell new watches and and service old ones that's fair enough um stephen it's been amazing talking to you mate i mean we haven't spoken for what probably four or five years i guess yeah we should do it on the pre-owned side of it and um i mean yeah it's been in love with this big deal so you're uh you're killing it on the youtube and you know it's um thank you very much and for anyone watching um just give your business a shout out mate so it won't do you any harm i'm sure so you're basically yeah thanks very much so we're up in carlisle in the lake district i've stopped before scotland and as i say we've got we've got the foundation of the rolex business you know we we do sell quite a lot of pre-owned i mean we'll probably triple our rolex numbers to what we had when we're agents um which is incredible but we are able to ship online ship worldwide and we've obviously got the history of having the ad we know what we're looking for all watches are correct and anything that he's done to it he's done properly whether we have to spend 500 pounds at rolex it's relative uh i'll worry about it i remember what a fussy boy he was sorry i remember what a fussy buyer he was oh i was picky still uh what's your website mate just give give your website a shout out yeah so joshuajula.com obviously a lot of the stuff we see is on instagram these days as well um which is massively more dominant for for the sales of our watches now um and again for how long the last they're in another window as quick as can be but people know the proper and we still pride ourselves on giving the service that we had when we were agents and for 40 years steven thanks so much for joining us mate i really appreciate and i know that uh the viewers are going to feel the same way i wish you all the best and a continued success thank you very much thanks you

Channel: Paul Thorpe

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Id: kynHQWxfxS8

Length: 25min 51sec (1551 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 25 2020