Rolex CEO Speaks On Retail, AI, and CPO
Rolex isn’t silent, but it is selective where it speaks. That’s why I paid close attention when CEO Jean-Frédéric Dufour sat on a Dubai Watch Week panel for about 45 minutes with Wei Koh and Ahmed Seddiqi. It was filmed, it was relaxed, and it covered a lot of ground: retail, AI, Certified Pre-Owned, younger collectors, and even the role of watch journalists in a social-media world.
Nothing he said will rewrite anyone’s understanding of Rolex. The value was in hearing those ideas laid out in one place, in his own words, with follow-up questions that actually pushed the conversation along.
Bucherer, distribution, and what “learning from retail” really means
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 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.
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 my mind goes to 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, one side facing the customer, the other facing the retailer. On the customer side, you can imagine service history, manuals, maybe even resale or insurance tools. On the retailer side, you can imagine inventory, allocation, and after-sales workflow tied directly to an individual watch.
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? I don’t think anyone has a clear answer yet, but it’s a tension I’ll be watching.
Machines, investment, and the eight-year number
Image Source: Hodinkee
The panel also dipped into manufacturing. Here, Dufour shared a detail that tells you a lot about how Rolex works without sounding like a marketing line. He said 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 constantly being renewed. Older machines are retired, newer ones are brought in, and the whole industrial backbone is kept on a relatively tight replacement cycle.
This is a steady, scheduled form of innovation. Rolex likes its products to look familiar and evolve slowly, but in the background the company spends serious money keeping the “boring” stuff modern. That’s part of how you get watches that feel consistent even as volumes grow and tolerances tighten.
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 Wei Koh followed up on what that means for human watchmakers. Dufour didn’t try to blur the line. Assembly is still done by people. Rolex is using AI to support the process, not to push humans out of it. Another clear line in the sand was with customer communication. 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 sold through that same store. Rolex had no real visibility or influence over how those used watches were sourced, presented, or serviced, even though the logo on the dial and the expectations around it were the same to the average consumer.
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 in a more intentional way, with documented service, a Rolex-backed warranty, and a clearer path into future ownership and after-sales care. Dufour didn’t dress this up as a grand strategy to dominate the secondary market, nor did he touch on costs or secondhand pricing. He 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. That was a noticeable pivot toward meeting the audience where it already lives, instead of letting the AD window or the traditional print cycle set the pace.
This panel belongs in the same category. Dufour knew this wasn’t just a room conversation. It was a piece of content that would live on YouTube, be clipped on social, and be quoted in articles like this one.
Why this panel is worth your time
On its own, any single quote from this panel is easy to scroll past. Put together, they form one of the clearest snapshots of Rolex’s current mindset that we’ve seen in a while. Dufour sketched out how the brand thinks about retail partners, what it expects to learn from Bucherer, how it invests in machinery, where AI fits into the picture, why CPO exists, and how it views the ecosystem of journalists, creators, and young collectors around it.
For me, this was a useful reminder that behind the curtain, Rolex is making a lot of practical, incremental decisions—about technology, people, retail relationships, and communication strategy—that add up to the version of the brand we experience in front of the curtain.
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