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The Orphan Boy Who Created Rolex

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Rolex is one of the most luxury brands in the world,
valued today at around 8 billion dollars.
Its history dates back a century ago
and began with an orphan teenager whose inheritance was stolen away from him.
With nothing other than his determination to overcome his challenges,
he ran away from his hometown and moved to another country.
After a few years working his way out, he decided to follow his passion and opened a watchmaking business.
Little did he know that this business venture would lead him to pioneer modern wristwatches,
changing its whole industry and creating a billion-dollar empire.
Hans Wilsdorf was born in Kulmbach, Germany, on March 22, 1881,
by parents Anna and Johan Daniel Wilsdorf.
He was the second son of three children.
His family ran a fairly successful business that was passed down from his grandfather,
selling iron goods, classifying them in the middle-range class.
Unfortunately, his mother got ill during the next few years and died in 1892.
To make it worse, a year later, his dad would pass away too,
leaving Hans an orphan at the age of 12.
Now under the custody of his mother's brothers,
his uncle immediately decided to sell his family's business and used some of the money for their education,
putting all three of them in a nice prestigious boarding school called Ernestinum Coburg in Bavaria, Germany.
Hans hated this decision early on and became depressed.
While living in the new town, Hans was seen as an outsider
and was often teased by other boys because of his religion.
To get through his difficult childhood, he decided to put his focus on school.
As he got older, he understood that even though he didn't like the decision of his uncles,
it became an important factor for his success.
"Our uncles were not indifferent to our fate;"
"nevertheless, the way in which they made me become self-reliant very early in life made me acquire the habit of looking after my possessions."
"And looking back, I believe that it is to this that much of my success is due."
Hans enjoyed reading books and became quite the bright student in school.
The subjects he most notably excelled in were mathematics and languages, where he learned French and English.
He was always curious about travel and knew that languages would be very useful,
which would eventually play a big role in his career.
During school, he became friends with a Swiss boy
who would tell him stories of his birthplace in La Chaux-de-Fonds, a city located in Switzerland
that was well-known for its long history in the watchmaking industry.
And Hans became very intrigued about the place.
One day, Hans had enough of the way of his life
and left the boarding school in Germany to move to Geneva, Switzerland.
At the age of 19, he got himself a job as an apprentice for an international pearl exporting company.
This company was buying pearls from various markets and would sort, grade, and package them for sale to jewelers.
He noticed the company wasn't really creating anything but was still making great profits.
There he immersed himself to learn their business tactics and was making good money for his age.
One day, Hans received a letter from his friend who offered him a job for a company called Kuno Korten.
Kuno Korten was one of the biggest high-quality watchmaking businesses at the time,
and was exporting about a million Swiss francs worth of pocket watches each year.
They also produced some of their own watches from scratch.
This well-known company was based in La Chaux-de-Fonds, the place he always wanted to go.
Even though the company he was already working at was more beneficial for him,
his curiosity for the place and the business around watches were stronger.
Therefore, in 1900, he moved to La Chaux-de-Fonds to work for this company.
He was hired as an English correspondent and clerk
thanks to his ability to write and read English that he learned back in school
and was getting paid with a monthly salary of 80 Swiss francs.
He was also responsible for winding hundreds of pocket watches every day
and verifying they were accurate.
He picked up tremendous insight into watchmaking
and obtained a big deal of knowledge about how all types of watches were produced.
However, his time there was cut short.
He had to go back to Germany and serve in the army after only two years at Kuno Korten.
After his service at 22 years old,
he moved to London, England, to work for another company of high-quality watches.
There, he was responsible for a bigger role
and was now in charge of increasing their sales.
During the two years he stayed there, he successfully managed to find more clients for the company
and grew their sales over time.
By then, he was already thinking about building his own business of watches
and was learning everything he could to further his knowledge into his future business.
During those years, he also met his future wife, Florence Frances May Crotty,
and would get married shortly after.
One day, Hans was sitting outside with his much older brother-in-law, Alfred James Davis,
and talked about life and plans for their future.
Hans told him he felt he was confident enough to open his own business of watches
but he just needed some capital.
Alfred did have the money and knew how passionate Hans was about watches.
Despite being very young, he took a chance on the German
and told him he was going to help him on his business venture
and was ready to invest his money.
They shook hands together, and in 1905, they founded the Wilsdorf and Davis Limited,
which would eventually become Rolex a few years later.
They partnered up with a Swiss watch company called Hermon Egler,
which was based in Switzerland and started importing movements from the Swiss country to England,
placing them in watch cases.
They also opened an office in Bienne, Switzerland, to favor his partnership there.
Soon after, they were specializing in the distribution of timepieces at affordable rates.
Even though Hans was a lover of watches,
there was one major thing he found unfavorable about the watch industry: pocket watches.
At the time, wristwatches were mostly worn by women as jewelry
and were looked down upon by some, the reason being for not being well-precise on the time.
These watches were much smaller than pocket watches and consisted of smaller movements,
which would regularly make the clock either go faster or slower due to small details in the movements.
This was the main reason why pocket watches were more popular at the time
and was considered masculine for their bulky size.
But for Hans, he mostly found it inconvenient to use.
It was a little hassle for him every time he had to reach his hand in the pocket in order to see the time,
especially when his hands were busy.
"Until then, it was thought to be almost impossible to create the perfect wristwatch"
"that could consistently show the exact time and be in everyday use."
"My personal opinion is that pocket watches will almost completely disappear,"
"and that wristwatches will replace them definitively."
Hans predicted that sooner or later wristwatches were going to be the new norm for everybody
and was fully committed to finding a way to create the perfect wristwatch for it.
He spent the next several years traveling to many countries all around Europe
and met countless watchmakers to discuss about the small details of watches.
During those years, he started to release his own wristwatches beginning the same year he founded his company.
One watch after another, he was crafting down on creating a better high quality and reliable wristwatch for men and women
applying what he learned from other watchmakers from his journey.
Soon after, his company began to get some traction,
and by 1908, it was one of the top firms in the watchmaking industry in England.
By now, Hans wanted to change the name of his company to something high-class, catchy, and easy to say, no matter the language.
It also needed to be short so the name could fit easily in the dial of the watch.
He spent a big deal of time combining five letters from the alphabet to come up with something
until finally, Rolex was born.
He immediately knew it was the perfect one,
and a few days later he registered the Rolex name as a trademark for Wilsdorf and Davis Limited in 1908.
During the next few years, Rolex was becoming known for its high-quality wristwatches,
and many rich people were already starting to use it.
But it didn't take long after when the First World War broke out,
and many businesses, including watch firms, were struggling to stay in business
and even had to shut down in some cases, but not Rolex.
This tragic event only made Hans's company more famous because of its already reliable wristwatches.
Many soldiers were given Rolex watches instead of pocket watches
because it was much easier and safer to use.
It also helped them to better coordinate their attacks because of its precision on time.
By then, the company had grown to such an extent that they were employing 60 people in 1914
and had big open office spaces in London.
To further their credibility, Rolex had already won the first-ever wristwatch chronometer rating from Switzerland,
followed by a Class A certificate of precision from London's Q Observatory.
This made the brand more trustworthy for people to buy.
But not everything was sunshine and rainbows for Hans.
In 1914, the British applied a 33% tax for all companies registered in Great Britain
that were exporting goods across international borders.
It became a big concern for Hans,
so he moved his company's headquarters from London to Biel, Switzerland,
in order to avoid these taxes.
Another reason for his move was because of the World War.
People from Britain began to dislike the Germans
since the name Hans Wilsdorf was clearly German.
And even though he registered Rolex before,
he was still using the Wilsdorf and Davis name in England,
which was getting looked down upon.
This also led him to completely switch his company name
from Wilsdorf and Davis Limited to the Rolex Watch Corporation Limited in 1915.
10 years later, Hans would also register Rolex's famous trademark logo of the five-star crown,
which became implemented from then on on the dial of their watches.
In 1919, the Rolex Watch Corporation moved its main office from Biel to Geneva,
where it still stands today.
From now on, the company focused on manufacturing the watch movements in Biel
and would transport them to Geneva, where they carefully verify the movements were accurate,
finishing them with their high-class design and launching their products.
It's here in Geneva where Hans would go all in with his team
to improve the technical innovation of the wristwatch.
"We must succeed in making the watch case so tight"
"that our movements will be permanently guaranteed against damage caused by dust, perspiration, water, heat, and cold."
"Only then will the perfect accuracy of the Rolex watch be secured."
Thanks to his patience and determination, it eventually paid off and paid off big time.
In 1926, Rolex released their new model that would forever change the watch industry:
the Rolex Oyster, the first-ever waterproof wristwatch in history.
This new model was sealed with a very tight case
that provided optimal protection for the small watch movements inside,
leading it to be waterproof.
Hans knew this was revolutionary,
and people would certainly be interested in it,
but he decided to wait for the perfect opportunity to present it to the world in a very creative way.
In 1927, Hans heard about a woman from London named Mercedes Gleitze
who claimed to be capable of swimming across the English Channel,
a 20.5-mile body of water that separated England and France.
People didn't believe her, so she was set to do it again in front of thousands of people,
even though the water temperature was much colder.
Hans saw the opportunity and encouraged her to wear a Rolex Oyster watch around her neck.
After swimming for over 10 hours, she was pulled out from the water after almost freezing to death
and made it about 4/5 of the way across the channel.
The task was not a complete success, but the Rolex Oyster came out of the water in perfect condition.
People went crazy for the watch,
and Hans followed the publicity by putting an ad in front of the London Daily Mail newspaper related to the event.
This is the point where Rolex rose to international fame as a revolutionary watch.
To further the hype, Hans also marketed his Rolex Oyster inside fishbowls with real fishes in it
on the sale display of every Rolex dealership for people to see when they walked by.
This genius strategy worked amazingly,
and people became hooked on the products.
By now, Hans decided to advertise heavily on Rolex.
So in 1928, he worked with the top British model at the time, Evelyn Lane, to promote his watches,
and of course, there were pictures of her wearing her wristwatch inside a fishbowl.
The publicity didn't stop there.
In 1933, Rolex Oysters were seen in the newspaper again related to a flight over Mount Everest,
in which the crew members who were wearing their Rolexes were very satisfied to see
that after the flight, their watches were still 100% functional.
Another example was when the famous driver Malcolm Campbell
set a speed record for driving around 300 miles per hour
wearing his Rolex in 1935.
Hans asked his permission to publicize it,
and Malcolm accepted it, refusing to get paid.
At this point, people began to perceive Rolex not only as a high-quality designed watch
but also as a trustworthy, reliable, and technical wristwatch
that anyone can wear for everyday use.
Only great marketing is needed to make a company successful.
During these times, Rolex continued to fascinate people when they introduced their updated model,
the Rolex Oyster Perpetual, in 1931,
which was the first-ever waterproof and self-winding wristwatch.
Its previous model of the Rolex Oyster was a great achievement,
but the challenge was that you still had to often manually wind the watch,
which made it more difficult because of its tight case.
You had to unscrew the Oyster crown first, wind it, then re-screw it again.
Creating this self-winding watch was a dream that for centuries people tried to perfect,
but none were successful.
From 1934 to 1940,
Hans also produced some high-quality watches outside of the Rolex firm
and trademarked it under his own name,
but it was discontinued due to the hatred that French, British, and U.S. Markets had for Germany.
Even with all his achievements, Hans would sometimes struggle to make his way in the market
and had to put double the effort to make a successful company due to his German name.
When World War II broke out, Rolex took a hard hit.
It became difficult and expensive to export products outside of Switzerland to some other big markets in Europe.
Hans was frustrated with the situation,
and to add to his bad luck, another tragedy followed:
his wife passed away in 1944.
To commemorate his wife, he established the Wilsdorf Foundation,
a charity organization for social causes.
Something to mention shortly before Hans's death,
he transferred 100% ownership of Rolex to the Wilsdorf Foundation,
which still owns and controls Rolex to this day.
Therefore, Rolex will never go public or be sold,
nor will they ever pay any taxes because it's essentially a charity.
As soon as World War II finished,
Rolex started to take off and tremendously.
To give you an idea, in 1946, Rolex had sold its 50,000 certified Rolex chronometer,
which they started certifying 20 years ago.
By the next year, in 1947,
their sales reached their 100,000 certified Rolex chronometer,
doubling their sales from the past two decades in a single year.
Its success was backed up from its new model that was released in 1945, the Rolex Datejust -
the first waterproof self-winding wristwatch to indicate the date of the month on the dial.
This was followed by another revolutionary model nearly 10 years later, the Rolex Day-Date -
the first waterproof and self-winding wristwatch to not only include the date of the month
but also the day of the week.
These types of watches are still seen to this day,
which is often the standard for normal use of wristwatches.
During the '50s, Rolex kept releasing a series of innovative watches.
The most legendary one was the Rolex Submariner, introduced in 1953.
It was the first deep-diving waterproof wristwatch that could reach 100 meters deep in the ocean
without getting dysfunctional.
Hans Wilsdorf died in the year 1960.
Following his death, Rolex started to approach itself as the luxury brand it is today.
The company focused its marketing more toward being an exclusive watch collection for people of high society, which worked.
Another factor to consider is that in 1985,
Rolex started to manufacture its watches with 904L,
a very endurable and expensive steel,
becoming the first watch to ever do so,
which is one of the reasons for their expensive prices.
Today, Rolex remains the most recognizable watch brand in the world.
From an orphan boy who started with nothing,
Hans Wilsdorf went for his own path and is responsible for changing the watch industry to what we know today.
His passion for design and technical innovation has placed him on the list of one of the most influential men in the industry,
and his legacy can be seen today in every person wearing a Rolex.