Reply With QuoteSo, in conclusion, they appear to be made at a Rolex facility in Switzerland.
You chose to assassinate me on another thread this evening, advising your displeasure in my posts.Originally Posted by markrlondon
Ditto.
Several times over.
Multiplied by ten.
So, in conclusion, they appear to be made at a Rolex facility in Switzerland.
Good grief, Rolex is not the final arbiter of semantic reality you know. What you refer to here is a product of their company decisions; none of it magically makes things like "Tudor" any less, in practice, the brand name of a range of watches made my Rolex (as well as the name of a subsidiary company owned by Rolex).
To summarise what I have said on this subject, the fact that Rolex have chosen to position the "Tudor" brand name, the Tudor company, and the range of watches (or set of ranges of watches, if you prefer) with the brand name "Tudor" in the way that they have with the branding that they have does not make the concept of a "brand name" and the concept of a "range of watches" magically separate in this context. There simply is no important or relevant difference in this context. This is such a simple concept that I wonder why it is so difficult for some people to grasp.
I think so. :-)
Or at least there is so far no evidence to the contrary.
It's not upset me, I'm rather enjoying watching you trying to wriggle out of the mess you have created for yourself.
The point is, "oyster" and "Cellini" are both collections (or ranges, or lines, or whatever else you want to call them) which ARE sold under the Rolex brand. Tudor is deliberately not.
It's not Rolex, Cellini and Tudor. It's Rolex (Oyster and Cellini) and Tudor.
What you're essentially saying mark is that Tissot, a Hamilton and Omega are equivalent to Constellation, Seamaster and Speedmaster, which they clearly aren't.
This is true as far as it goes but it is entirely orthogonal to what I've been talking about (i.e. at cross purposes). I have said nothing to the contrary.
To my mind, the arrangement of words described as "Rolex (Oyster and Cellini) and Tudor" is indistinguishable in any relevant, any substantive or any important sense in this context to the arrangement described as "Rolex, Cellini and Tudor". The differences simply count for nothing important in this context. They are all in actual practice just Rolex-owned brand names which the company has chosen to deploy in certain ways, some as part of Rolex, some as a subsidiary, some referring to ranges, some to a company. Anything more than that is marketing convenience, from what I can see. They could have made Cellini a separate company like Tudor is and it would make no substantive difference to anything that is relevant to this discussion, for example. It would still all be brand names and product ranges, no matter how the constituent companies were arranged. All trade names of any sort are in effect just brand names.
Last edited by markrlondon; 22nd September 2014 at 00:19.
Exactly.
No, that is not what I said. If I had wanted to say that then I would have done so. I said no such thing about equivalence.
I've said what I've said and I am sure as hell not going to rehash it now in a context other than the specific one in which it was intended.
I do not have a face, or range of faces, large enough to accommodate the brand of palm heading towards my model of forehead that this thread engenders.
Gray
Give a man enough rope, etc.
He appears to say so.
R
Ignorance breeds Fear. Fear breeds Hatred. Hatred breeds Ignorance. Break the chain.
A Tudor is a Rolex, just as every Bentley is a Volkswagen. Not.
Someone who lies about the little things will lie about the big things too.
you are a bad person. I used to have a smile on my face when I fired up my Bentley Polo 1.0 every morning and now you've gone and ruined it for me.
I was just about to use this analogy. I've had a few Porsche 924Ss and many car experts would tell me it was 'just a Volkswagen'. I always assumed they were simple and treated them as such.
I think he is related to John Lewis, his tag line is "Never knowingly proven wrong"
I had a very similar thought whilst reading this thread....
Cellini is to Rolex what "5 series" is to BMW
Tudor is to Rolex what MINI is to BMW
Just as the cellini range has rolex written on the dial the 5 series sports a BMW brand badge
Tudor has it's own brand logo on the dial just as mini has it's own brand badge rather than a BMW badge
Another classic TZ thread. Thanks
I would just like to say...............thanks crusader!!!!!.
"Now there's a name I've not heard in a long, long time. A long time."
Yes, with the ceramic cases being made by Tudor themselves. The current Tudor brochure says:
"The manufacture of the [ceramic] bezel and the case is carried out in-house. The brand has installed the exclusive equipment required to perfectly master the quality of the final product in conformity with its stringent specifications"
I suspect Tudor and Rolex don't want to draw attention to the fact that Rolex make the cases anymore. Maybe they think it may harm the Rolex brand if it widely believed Tudor also come out of the same factory.
Not the best kept industry secret is it,
True. But most watch buyer will have no idea Rolex makes the cases unless it says so "on the box". If you remember the last few years before Tudor left the UK they stopped having the word " Case made by Rolex" on the case back, even though they were obviously still using Oyster cases. They also stopped using Rolex crowns. I suspect this was to create a bit of distance between the brands, even though Rolex still made everything.
It's funny this thread thou?
Oh argh - a classic
Sometimes the answer to a question ("Is a Tudor a Rolex?") is both yes and no.
Yes, it's made by Rolex, who owns the Tudor brand.
No, it's not a Rolex brand watch, except for early models which say ROLEX on them.
In the same way, my old Audi A4 was a VW, because VW owns Audi, but it wasn't, because it was branded 'Audi'. It's not that complicated.
As far as what's a brand, what's a model, what's a collection, and so on, Wikipedia puts it this way:
"Rolex SA offers products under the Rolex and Tudor brands. Rolex has three watch lines: Oyster Perpetual, Professional, and Cellini." (emphasis mine)
As a management academic, I'm paid to talk utter bollocks at length - It is therefore disheartening to see someone willing to do the same for free.
^ lol!
loving this thread....
:)
Good luck everybody. Have a good one.
And is willing to do so on almost any topic on here, he is also the president of the local Parkinson's law of triviality society, BS and bikesheding are specialized subjects that our man excels at.
Is there any issue for Tudor with regard to ETA ceasing to supply movements outside the Swatch group? Will they continue to sell to some manufacturers, or will Rolex be looking at one of the other movement manufacturers to supply Tudor?
I wondered that as well, if they would be affected
Perhaps they should put Seiko movements in it if they can't use ETA, that would be the perfect marriage surely???
I will get my coat
Kevin
I'll add that to the long list of things I didn't know.
ETA, or rather The Swatch Group, is not cutting off supply to everyone outside of the group – there are what would be considered 'preferred accounts', which they will still supply, as per the contract the parties have signed.
So Tudor (Rolex) will not be worrying in the slightest come December 31st 2019, at 23:59.
If the Sellita stake aspect is true, then it's only going to be of use when the existing ETA contract expires and Sellita have been able to increase the volume of movements made, which at the moment they're not able to do so.
As an aside to this thread there's an interesting article on the state of movements manufacturing within Switzerland.
Last edited by PJ S; 23rd September 2014 at 19:27.
Things were so much simpler in the old days
Johnny
Thanks for that link.
Going way off topic now, but I am puzzled by ETA's strategy here. It's not like ETA movements will suddenly become more prestigious or be regarded as 'in house' for each of their brands, and even then only WIS types care about that stuff anyway. Why then surrender a large part of their market to Soprod and Sellita unnecessarily?
Absolutely.
How to make a mountain out of a mole hill springs to mind.
Note to Eddie, the sooner this thread gets banished to Classic Posts, the better. Utter Insanity.
Bit of a shame the original question didn't really get discussed. I'm not that bothered where they are made, but I can think of at least two reasons why they might not be made by Rolex:
1. Tooling/material differences (mainly the 904 vs 316 steel question); and
2. Capacity constraints
Both touched on briefly in the thread.
iirc the conclusion was:
There's an article on jake's rolex fan boy incarnate blog about someone visiting the Rolex factory and being told "that building over there is where we make the Tudors"
That could be just a fib (on the part of the Rolex factory guide) of course, but there's no real reason to doubt it.
Those like you (& me) who wondered about tooling, capacity & the logic of diverting production to a cheaper product, that's sold in less outlets (US & UK only recently getting Tudor back) were imo correct to want the question answered. However, a separate production facility makes perfect sense.
You can bet Swatch Group will make a big deal about exclusively using the market leading ETA movement families, or some other similar marketing phrase. It's all to do with brand positioning and to distinguish themselves from the increasing number of independents using bought-in movements.
Not sure if I'm reading more into the wording there, but you are aware Tudor have been sold on the Continent for quite some time, in their current guise, which means adding the UK and US to the sales roster, only increases production demand?
Moreover, Tudor is the lower priced Rolex offering, which grabs them a share of the market segment they've long since abandoned as Subs (and the rest) climbed in price over the last decade.
I'm sure there's market data which shows this area of expenditure to be one Rolex can't afford to dismiss as insignificant and therefore not worth bothering with.
As for the tooling aspect – a complete fallacy and red herring, given the decades of experience working with 316L previously, and presumes all inventory of old tooling, when switching to 904, was dumped into a skip one day.
Think about it seriously for a moment, and remember they've still been making Tudor products for a good many years before the US and UK came back into play again – it wasn't as if they just started production back up a few weeks ago!
Last edited by PJ S; 22nd September 2014 at 14:12.
Hollands Pies are made in Baxenden.
"The Internet" may be questioning it (in an effort to "shtir", as kids used to say in school?), but since the internet mostly looks like this these days:
...I'd say that being questioned by it goes way past risibility, and borders on farce.
...but what do I know; I don't even like watches!
Not entirely sure what you're asking me? Other than the part about Tudor being available on the continent for a while, in which case the answer is yes, I am aware.
Whatever Rolex did/didn't do with Tudor's manufacture, they did it a while ago as it's been quite a while (1990s?) since Tudors stopped using Rolex cases. Not sure why I'd need to seriously think about that?
I wonder if Rolex's abandoning of 316 steel and it's associated tooling coincides with Tudor getting bespoke cases and bracelets? The tooling would of course amount to blades, reamers et el (which FYI are consumable items), the actual mills, lathes etc would carry over across materials
I for one, am quite happy to believe that on the colossal Rolex estate, there is a separate building (or buildings) dedicated to Tudor
I agree that Rolex can only see potential profitability in the market segment that Tudor resides, or else why bother... The marketing of Tudor is very different to that of Rolex, to my eye (& I don't work in marketing) the watchword [sic] of Tudor is style.
IMO the original question of this thread concerned whether there was any likelihood that Tudor placed the bulk of manufacture into an outsourced business model (like Swatch do) or if it was in house.
The "proof" from the article in Jake's Rolex Blog, suggests the latter.
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