FrançaisA famous sentence uttered by Hans Wilsdorf sums up the character he was: “We want to be the first and Rolex will be considered the number one brand, the best.” It is not enough to say that history has proved him right, Rolex has become a reference throughout the world. It’s about understanding how man has managed to bring his ambitions to life, through hard work and innovation, while keeping some mystery about his personal life and becoming one of the most famous watchmakers.
The mystery Hans Wilsdorf
Innovative spirit, visionary man … The qualifiers are not lacking, since we evoke the person of Hans Eberhard Wilhelm Wilsdorf. However, if they highlight the discreet genius of a pillar of twentieth century watchmaking, they do not shed light on the private life of the founder of the Rolex brand. Man is, indeed, quite mysterious, almost as much as the operation – necessarily magical – of his watches, which are marvels of precision.
The reader who looks at his official biography published by Rolex, must be satisfied with four austere lines evoking four major dates – his birth in 1881 in Bavaria, the creation of his own company in London in 1905, the invention of the Rolex brand in 1908, his death in 1960. Point. For the rest, it is necessary to dig the question and go back in time, in order to learn that Hans Wilsdorf was born of Protestant parents in the Bavarian Roman Catholic, in Kulmbach, that he was the youngest of three children, and that he found himself orphaned at the age of twelve.
After finishing his studies in Switzerland, he was hired as a clerk in a watchmaking house, before emigrating to London in 1903. It was there that he created, two years later, at the age of 24 years, his own company, Wilsdorf & Davis, helped by the financing of his brother-in-law James Davis, husband of his sister Ana. The company imports watch movements made in Switzerland, in Biel, as a guarantee of quality for the design of its own watches. The entire Wilsdorf project is based on a bold gamble: to produce very precise, yet affordable, wristwatches at a time when the pocket watch is still authoritative. Well it took him, because very quickly, his creations are exported throughout the British Empire. In 1908, he imagines the new name of his brand, five letters that will become the most famous watchmaking: Rolex.
The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 changed the game. Wilsdorf is full of anti-German sentiment rising in England. But it is mainly the tax cause that pushes him to relocate to Switzerland, to Biel, to escape the tax of 33% applied by the British government on the import. Rolex SA then moved to Geneva in 1919. More than two decades later, in 1946, it also founded its second brand, Tudor.
The rest of Wilsdorf’s life merges with the evolution of the Rolex range, as if its existence had only been beaten at the rate of knocking. Here, it is a brilliant marketing gesture sketched at the height of the Second World War, when he sends to the British officers prisoners of the Germans, on the other side of the Swiss border, Rolexes with invoices to be paid after the end of the conflict (a discreet way to mark one’s allegiance to the Allies while distancing oneself from the Nazi regime). There, the creation of the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation in 1944, after the death of his wife, foundation largely for charitable purposes and to which he bequeaths all his shares of Rolex.
Rolex, or the creation of the most famous brand in the world
The history of the Rolex is indissolubly linked to that of Hans Wilsdorf. For his range of wristwatches, which he intends to launch in the wake of the creation of Wilsdorf & Davis, the German businessman wants a brief name, easy to memorize and pronounce in all languages . He already sees this name adorn the dials of his watches. Based on an alphabet, he tries thousands of combinations of letters to try to find the good, the most universal, but to no avail. It was during a walk in London that he was whispered the name of Rolex – by “a genius,” he said.
To conquer the first place on the podium of watches, Wilsdorf relies on prestige and quality – that of movement, that of chronometric precision, that of objects made exclusively by hand. In 1910, a Rolex won the first certificate of good performance ever awarded to a wristwatch, awarded by the Evaluation Center of Biel, the Swiss Official Chronometer Testing Institute (COSC). In 1914, it was another class “A” grade certificate issued by the Kew Observatory in Great Britain; this distinction was, however, hitherto reserved for marine chronometers. Since then, almost all Rolex production has been tested to obtain the COSC label. Over time, Wilsdorf will extend this quality requirement by establishing a punctual after-sales service, performed by specially trained staff in dedicated schools.
Rolex is, without question, the number one luxury watch brand. A first position which, passing years, does not suffer any challenge. A brand that has become a major reference worldwide, to the grace of its founder. A century after its creation, the brand continues to grow its sales: in 2014, more than 780,000 Rolex watches sold for a turnover of 4.35 billion euros.
Watches and men
Hans Wilsdorf was not only a genius businessman, the visionary who laid the foundations of modern marketing by communicating in a targeted way about his products – as evidenced by this episode of watches sent to British prisoners, awesome advertising shot. He also invented timepieces of a quality and precision to all tests, which accompanied those who carried them in exceptional human adventures.
In 1926, he designed the Rolex Oyster, the first truly waterproof watch with an airtight housing.
In 1931, he invented the self-winding Rolex Perpetual. This system, which goes back to using simple wrist movements, is at the origin of all the similar mechanisms found in current watches.
In 1945, the launch of the Datejust: not only is it the first self-winding wristwatch that also offers a stopwatch complication, but as another novelty, a window on the dial shows the date .
These Rolex models have not – never – been only leisure watches. Very early, their singular performances were adopted by sportsmen and scientists, transforming them de facto in accompaniment of the most senseless challenges of the first half of the 20th century. Wilsdorf did not forget to take advantage of these various scenarios to use them as living laboratories, in order to test the technical prowess of his timepieces. For example, note that:
In 1927, the Englishman Mercedes Gleitze crosses the Channel swimming by wearing a Rolex Oyster wrist, proving definitely, after 10 hours of immersion, its perfect seal.
In 1933, the first flight of Everest was performed by a crew wearing Rolex Oyster.
In 1935, racer Malcolm Campbell wore a Rolex watch when he set a land speed record in Utah at over 485 km / h at the wheel of a Bluebird.
In 1953, when Everest was defeated by the team of John Hunt, many of the mountaineers present adopted Rolex. The same year, to celebrate the event and ride on this success, Wilsdorf launches the Oyster Perpetual Explorer.
In fact, in the 50s, Rolex embraces this popularity and designs professional watches, intended to be used for these extreme activities: aviation, mountaineering, scientific exploration, scuba diving, etc. The watches of the exploit are born.
Rolex has never lost its superb. But more than just a symbol of social success (which the advertising agent Jacques Séguéla hastily reduced to the occasion of an unfortunate formula), Rolex has always been, and will probably remain for a long time, a materialization of the high precision and reliability of Swiss watchmaking.