Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Or anything.

There's lots of ways to know what time it is.

So describe to me through history and especially today, all the reasons, the main reasons you think people buy high-end watches.

It's such a fascinating set of different things and considerations.

I'm also curious how you think about the luxury strategy itself from a marketing standpoint behind watches.

I remember reading this called Luxury Strategy, which I recommend to anyone interested in this topic.

And one of the ideas that stands out from that book is that when marketing a luxury product, you want the ratio of the number of people aware of something to those that actually have it to be as wide as possible.

Because one of the jobs you're doing when you buy a really fancy watch is you want other people to know that it's a marker of success, sort of like a signaling function to watches.

How do you think that piece of this has evolved over time?

Maybe before we go into the history, which is so interesting and really important, we could just do a level set for the audience on Rolex, the business, and just some basics.

Like how many watches do they produce a year?

The revenue that they produce a year, maybe say a little bit about their very unique business structure, which I think would certainly shocking to me.

And I think we'll shock some people too, that aren't familiar with it.

Just level set us on the size and type of the Rolex as a business.

It is so ridiculously singular.

I cannot think of another example of a company that I want to come to vertical integration and quality on some of these key brand elements and real elements of a Rolex in the absence of a profit motive over such a long period of time.

There just aren't other stories like this where there's such dominance.

Maybe you can give us the, I don't really care how long it is, as long as you want to make it because it's so damn interesting, the history of Rolex, the brand and the company, its founding and its key timeline milestones.

It's an unbelievable story.

And also, it's amazing to me the commitment to quality over time.