Rolex CEO Speaks On Retail, AI, and CPO

Rolex doesn’t often give interviews with its CEO. The brand is famously controlled in how it communicates, so I paid close attention when CEO Jean-Frédéric Dufour sat on a Dubai Watch Week panel for about 45 minutes with Wei Koh, founder of Revolution magazine, and Ahmed Seddiqi, chairman of Seddiqi Holding, the group behind the Middle East’s largest luxury watch retailer and Dubai Watch Week itself. The panel, which felt very candid and conversational, covered a lot of ground: retail, AI, Certified Pre-Owned, and even the role of younger collectors in a social-media-driven world.

Bucherer, distribution, and the role of independent retailers

Image Source: Switzerland Global Enterprise

Wei Koh asked Dufour about Rolex’s Bucherer acquisition and what it might mean for Rolex’s long-term retail strategy. The answer was pretty straightforward. Bucherer accounts for a small slice of Rolex’s overall distribution. Rolex is not steering its business toward an all-Rolex, vertically owned network. The long-standing model of working with independent Authorized Dealers remains central to their distribution.

Dufour framed the Bucherer deal as a learning opportunity. Bucherer is a sophisticated retailer with deep experience running multi-brand stores and mono-brand boutiques. Owning that organization gives Rolex direct insight into the realities of front-line retail in a way they simply didn’t have before. That doesn’t mean Bucherer suddenly replaces, or even overshadows, the family-owned jeweler in a smaller market that has been selling Rolex for decades.

That’s where I start to wonder about standardization. On paper, Rolex is already laying the groundwork for a more unified ownership experience. Every modern Rolex comes with a warranty card that contains an NFC chip. A couple years ago, Rolex filed a patent for a digital portal that could open when that card is scanned. On the customer side, the portal could show service history, manuals, maybe even resale or insurance tools. On the retailer side, you can imagine after-sales workflow and some sort of client portal.

The big question for me is what this looks like at the retail level, especially at smaller, independently owned ADs. How much of the experience will eventually feel standardized and “Rolex-direct,” and how much will continue to reflect the character of the local jeweler who happens to sell Rolex?

Machines, investment, and the eight-year average

Image Source: Hodinkee

The panel also dipped into manufacturing. Here, Dufour shared an interesting detail: the average age of Rolex’s machine tools is eight years. In other words, the equipment that cuts cases, mills components, and finishes parts is being renewed every eight years, on average.

This is a steady, scheduled form of innovation. You pick up a modern Rolex watch and marvel at the build quality, the tolerances, the finishing -- it's these scheduled tooling upgrades keep that feeling consistent even as volumes grow.

How Rolex actually uses AI

From there, the conversation moved to artificial intelligence. Dufour described AI as a tool that helps program and maintain machines on the production floor. He went on to say, “AI can also help you, for example, with the final quality test because you can replace human eyes with AI and, instead of controlling maybe just some samples of what you do, you can control 100% of what you do, and in a much more accurate way.”

Wei Koh clarified: “But you still insist a lot on human beings there… assembly is done by human beings… there’s so much humanity there, and that’s important, right?”

Dufour responded, “Super important. They’re watchmakers; we can’t have everything done by robots.”

I like that Koh followed up on what AI, or its involvement in Rolex's manufacturing, means for human watchmakers. Dufour didn’t blur any lines. Assembly is still done by people. There's a human coiling every mainspring (machine assisted, but still). Rolex is using AI to support the process, not to push humans out of it. Another clear line in the sand was with customer relations. There is no Rolex AI chatbot or callbot. Part of the Rolex experience is connecting with human beings, in person or over the phone.

The logic behind Rolex Certified Pre-Owned

Image Source: London Jewelers

Certified Pre-Owned came up briefly, and here again Dufour’s explanation was matter-of-fact. When Rolex looked at sales by category at many partner retailers, they often saw a similar pattern. Rolex sat at the top. Right behind it, as the second-best-selling “brand,” was pre-owned Rolex. Rolex had no real influence over how those used watches were sourced, presented, or serviced, even though the coronet is on the dial the expectations were the same to the average consumer, and they often sat near the new Rolexes.

The CPO program was designed to bring that second category closer to Rolex’s own standards. A customer buying a Certified Pre-Owned Submariner or Datejust now enters the brand’s orbit with documented service, a Rolex-backed warranty, and a clearer path into future ownership and after-sales care. Dufour presented it as a response to how people were already shopping.

Younger collectors and Rolex’s digital behavior

Dufour also touched on generational shifts. The younger buyers Rolex is thinking about grew up online. They research online, watch videos, and deliberate long before they walk into a store. At the same time, they are drawn to mechanical things that sit outside that digital environment. That contrast could be part of the appeal, says Dufour.

If you’ve been watching Rolex for the past couple of years, you can see how that thinking has already shaped their behavior. The most obvious example is their strategy around the Land-Dweller launch at Watches & Wonders. Rolex gave early access to select online creators so that hands-on content would be ready the moment the watch went live.

To me, this very panel belongs in the same category. Dufour and Rolex wanted to heard, not just at Dubai Watch Week, but as a piece of content that would live on YouTube, be clipped on social media, and be quoted in articles like this one.

Why this panel is worth your time

CLICK HERE to watch the full panel on Dubai Watch Week's YouTube Channel

This panel is one of the clearest looks at Rolex’s modern direction I’ve seen. Dufour candidly lays out how the brand sees its retail partners, how it invests in machinery and AI, its CPO plan, and how it’s thinking about younger collectors.

For me, it was a reminder that Rolex’s direction, in both watchmaking and brand strategy, comes from many practical, incremental decisions all working together over time.