Rolex SA
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| Privately held company | |
| Industry | Watch manufacturing |
| Founded | London, United Kingdom (1905) |
| Founder |
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| Headquarters | Geneva, Switzerland |
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Area served
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Worldwide |
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Key people
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Bertrand Gros, Chairman Gian Riccardo Marini, CEO |
| Products |
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Production output
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751,285 COSC movements (2011) |
| Services |
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| Revenue |
 US$4.7 billion (2016) |
| Owner | Wilsdorf Foundation |
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Number of employees
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2,800 |
| Subsidiaries | Montres Tudor SA |
| Website | www |
Rolex SA is a Swiss luxury watchmaker. The company and its subsidiary Montres Tudor SA design, manufacture, distribute and service wristwatches sold under the Rolex and Tudor brands. Founded by Hans Wilsdorf and Alfred Davis in London, England in 1905 as Wilsdorf and Davis, Rolex moved its base of operations to Geneva, Switzerland in 1919.
Forbes ranked Rolex 64th on its 2016 list of the world's most powerful global brands. Rolex is the largest single luxury watch brand, producing about 2,000 watches per day.
The company is owned by the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation, a family private trust which does not pay corporate tax.
Alfred Davis and his brother-in-law Hans Wilsdorf founded Wilsdorf and Davis, the company that would eventually become Rolex SA, in London, England in 1905. Wilsdorf and Davis' main commercial activity at the time involved importing Hermann Aegler's Swiss movements to England and placing them in high-quality watch cases made by Dennison and others. These early wristwatches were sold to jewellers, who then put their own names on the dial. The earliest watches from Wilsdorf and Davis were usually hallmarked "W&D" inside the caseback.
In 1908 Wilsdorf registered the trademark "Rolex" and opened an office in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. The company name "Rolex" was registered on 15 November 1915. The book The Best of Time: Rolex Wristwatches: An Unauthorized History by Jeffrey P. Hess and James Dowling says that the name was just made up. One story, never confirmed by Wilsdorf, recounts that the name came from the French phrase horlogerie exquise, meaning "exquisite clockwork" or as a contraction of "horological excellence". Wilsdorf was said to want his watch brand's name to be easily pronounceable in any language. He also thought that the name "Rolex" was onomatopoeic, sounding like a watch being wound. It is easily pronounceable in many languages and, as all its upper-case letters have the same size, can be written symmetrically. It was also short enough to fit on the face of a watch.
In 1914 Kew Observatory awarded a Rolex watch a Class A precision certificate, a distinction normally granted exclusively to marine chronometers.
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Wikipedia