How I built my jewelry empire and purchased my dream car l Ferrari Collector David Lee

so today we're going to talk about having a goal in my case the 288 gto when i was in high school and what to do to work towards getting that gold in my case own this car but in your case could be something else as you know i always pair a watch with the car so today i thought i'm going to pair my father's rolex day-date that he had bought in the mid-1980s just as when i was seeing this car the 288 gto i saw in the magazine 1984 around that time my father bought this watch for him this was his goal he was a jeweler he was in producing gemstones for wholesale to sell to other retail jewelers so he wasn't in the retail business because i started the retail business but to him a success is being able to buy a rolex and to wear it it's an investment just like ferrari's investment it was appropriate it's around the same time very sentimental about it it's obviously in my collection something that means very dear to me but we're talking about goals so i thought this would be the most appropriate so when i graduated from usc business school in 1990 it was the worst economic real estate recession that happened it wasn't a good time to start the business but i joined my father's wholesale business and was involved with that for a year was losing money every month because it was just it was it was people weren't buying people didn't have money to buy he was scared to sell couldn't collect so i decided to approach my dad and say let's try change the business to retail you know because at least in the retail business you can control your own environment by the marketing you do and it's it's cash and carry somebody pays for it then picks up the merchandise and he says yeah i'm going to support you that i think that's a good idea and so i opened my store hinghwali jewels retail store in 1993. now granted our company since my father had started was 1965 he was always on the manufacturing wholesale end when i joined and really changed the business model in 1993 when i opened my store in san gabriel it was a luxury retail store everybody that says in the jewelry industry says well if you're going to do retail you got to get rolex if you get a rolex brand first of course there's a prestige that you're a rolex jeweler but second rolex will pay for this expenses so that is before i was a rolex dealer that was what i knew and i wanted to get that i wanted to be a rolex dealer but i also know that in the past and talking to everybody people take 10 15 20 years to become a rolex apply for it because they really watch if you are a first the best jeweler in the area do you sell bootleg rolex when you're not supposed to do you really wait it out until you properly get the dealership how do you handle business how's your financials so they check through all that stuff before they give you the line part of the success story or my formula for success is is five things work hard work hard with perseverance work hard with integrity and that's what you can control what the site you can control is the business opportunity and the timing so for me the business opportunity is wanting to get rolex i have a retail store i knew i worked hard because i worked seven days a week i was the first one to open and last one to close i did all the jobs because when i when i first started it wasn't the big company that it is today i had to be the salesperson i had to be the purchasing person the marketing person the accountant had to wear all the hats now perseverance or perseverance that i was and to persevere to get the rolex appointment integrity i never bootlegged rolex even though i had people asking me every day to buy rolex and i knew other people around town were bootlegging them they were selling gray market they weren't authorized to say they were selling and they were making money that's a you know real dilemma you're trying to make a profit for the company you're trying to survive and people are asking for product it's normal to want to fulfill the demand but i didn't do that timing it was early 1990s remember the recession well rolex was in a lot of chain stores at that time and because of the every recession these big companies file chapter 11 so they get out of their debt bankruptcy chapter 11 bankruptcy that was about the time i was applying fortunately enough i applied in in two years because of right timing and my perseverance and hard work and integrity they gave me the brand in 1995 became the official rolex jeweler and that changed of course everything it brought more brands to my store afterwards other brands wanted to be in association with rolex the store got more famous i my revenues went up i had opened more stores and we had invested in real estate and other investment and so forth so forth which allowed me later on to make enough equity to be able to buy investments like this car right so that's kind of where it leads to where i can achieve my goal by the age of 30 i was able to also reach my goal of buying a lamborghini i wanted a lamborghini countach but at that time i was able to buy a early 1991 lamborghini diablo even though it was a countach it was a lamborghini it was diablo the next model and so to me i had achieved that before the age of 30. [Music] i think in business you know everybody applied to get the rolex line you know they write the letter to new york you get the response and that's not so positive and people give up maybe i'm sure they get thousands of letters every day asking to be a rolex jeweler i think in everything you got to think outside the box you can just do the same as everybody else does so at that time i made a video and using vhs cassettes and i would send it to rolex and they said well you know we can't give you appointment because it's so busy in baselworld some of you know what that is boswell in switzerland and you know we can maybe give you appointment in between appointments when there's a downtime but not the actual appointment because everybody gets a one-hour appointment and it's very busy they got to get a lot of people through and i know that because we go there and we get one hour appointment as official rolex jeweler anyways the first year i went to baselworld you know i never been to europe you know i grew up in a middle class family but we didn't travel with europe and and all that stuff so i didn't know what i was doing i to find this little town boswell i didn't know where that was so i just kind of found my way over there lo and behold what i found was baselworld was this big convention center in the city of basel switzerland it's a traditional that that's where they had the watch fair and inside this convention was every brand you can imagine and every brand had like a a mansion in there that they built to construct for the show and then tear down and so forth and obviously rolex had the big one so i went to the rolex booth and i went up to the counter i said okay here i'm david lee from hengwali jewelers i would like to see someone from the u.s the gals would call and say you know what they're not available so you know walk around and come back i said okay so the first day when i was there of course the show started at nine i went there nine o'clock not available went back ten o'clock not available eleven o'clock now available twelve one two three four five and then six o'clock it it closed so struck out the f the whole day so i said okay well maybe the second day would be better so i went back early nine o'clock not you know to go to the calendar rolex counter and ask for appointment not available and then 11 o'clock i came back not available 12 o'clock came back not available went back again one two three four five six not available so second days i struck out okay i said third day has to be the charm going back the third day but i only had half day so at nine o'clock not available 10 11 12 not available so by around noon i said you know i gotta leave i got to go to the airport to catch my flight i wasn't able to see anybody so anyways i had no choice i got back onto the plane was came back i was thinking in my mind you know what a bummer you know that i spent all this money went to went to switzerland went to basel didn't see anybody you know what a bummer but i said you know what i'm not gonna give up i'm gonna sell what i have to sell you know there's always next year so then i went back next year again first day nine o'clock not available 10 o'clock not available eleven o'clock twelve one two again deja vu it was all day not available second day i said okay i'm gonna go there nine o'clock not available ten o'clock eleven o'clock around three o'clock though i was surprised because the gal said you know what the the appointment ended earlier and somebody in the u.s is going to see you i said no way so at that time i was jet lagged i was nervous i felt like i wanted to throw up i had so much adrenaline going so the guy came out was i remember with alan brill he was a national sales manager in the us at that time he came out he's from new york had a new new york accent kind of this frank sinatra vive to him and then he came to me and said hey david so uh tell me why should i open you as a dealer so i remember you know he had given me like one or two minutes to tell him so i told him all this stuff i told him all this stuff why and everything actually the not much different than what i wrote in the letter and so afterwards he heard it and he said thank you for coming to boswell switzerland thank you for telling me this if something changes we'll call you and that was it so i left got back on the plane i was thinking whole time back could i have said something better to convince them to give me a chance and answer i thought i did my best there was nothing more i could have done i said everything that were good arguments and and that's it so i just went back and i said you know what there's always next year i can always go back just continue to work and sell what i had to sell well six months later i got a call from doug meine whom was a regional manager along with ron mangurelli who's a salesperson and said hey david are you available for me to stop by i said of course so i remember that day he came and he said that's you know we were in my vip room he said david how would you like to be our official rolex jeweler like i remember i dropped to the floor almost you know i picked myself up and of course i said yes and for a few months i was in a kind of a dream state because i couldn't believe it was real i couldn't believe i got it relatively quick and the rolex would open us as the official rolex jeweler but we did get the product did become a official rolex jeweler and then that changed everything you know changed our company image it changed the opportunities the brands that wanted to also come in the other great brands that i have i have over 30 brands of really great luxury swiss watch companies and and so it really changed the whole direction of the company and and therefore we were we had profit to invest and into real estate and so forth when i've been a rolex uh retailer for a few years i had an opportunity to have dinner with alan again and of course he later on became the first u.s president so over dinner i said hey alan what um why why why did you open me you know why did i get the chance so many people wanted to be a rolex jeweler he says you know what rolex we're like the ci we know everything you know we we know if somebody is is financially sound we know that do they do a good job in the market do they do they do they play uh fair you know um do they bootleg the product or anything like that we know all that stuff we know that you you were uh good you had a good reputation but i had this look in your eyes and see were you sincere in going to be gonna insincere on what you're going to say how you're going to take care of the rolex brand and will you be the official world jeweler that we want you to be and at switzerland when you came and you looked into my eyes and you told me the things she told me i believed you and so therefore that's why i wanted to give you a chance you know in the days where everything you know young people like to text and and email you know their very important deal stuff you it's got to be in person you got to look the person in the eye and say hey you know what this is what it is so you know this kind of stuff you can't get in text is so informal it's so non-personal and so you know for me that's what worked out and it helped me to be able to it was one of the major steps that helped me to be able to reach my goal and of course as i told you one of my goal was to get the 288 gto and we have it here

Channel: Ferrari Collector David Lee

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Id: Az3iGhB0qdA

Length: 13min 52sec (832 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 21 2020