There’s been talk of Rolex trimming its distribution, but given the power of Jared, this seems significant. From Signet Group’s recent conference call, CEO Mike Barnes dropped this interesting nugget …

… the bottom line is that [Jared] will be exiting our sales partnership with Rolex in the U.S. during the spring of next year …

What has happened is that as Rolex has repositioned their brand, including [moving] to even higher luxury price points, we really feel it’s no longer optimally positioned for our core Jared customers. It’s a great brand of course, but our customers are really in the upper middle market and not in the ultra high-end luxury consumer.

Rolex realizes this as well and hence they are making what they believe are the appropriate moves to reposition their brand accordingly. This is not directed just solely at Signet, but it’s really a core change in their thoughts regarding the proper channels for distribution for them and this has been, you know just to put a little bit more perspective behind it, it’s really been an evolution as we have closed certain doors for Rolex over several years now. In fact, we’ve only carried it in about 30 doors during the current year.

 Meanwhile, people on Rolex forums are crowing about the fantastic sales.

Rob Bates

JCK News Director