THE NEW SKY-DWELLER

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This year’s Basel World proved to be another watch fair with loads of interesting watches, by interesting, I mean there is watches from the whole spectrum. I’m not saying that all the novelties were rubbish, but at least I think they could have been a little bit less selective in terms of choosing their product goals.

You may have seen me talk about the popular Rolex Yacht-Master, which everyone had a chance to joke about. But in fact it wasn’t such a bad marketing move from Rolex after all. Although it might look like a watch that could be sold together with gummy bear packages.

If you were to ask me about my favorite news from Rolex this year, I’ll certainly say it is the new Sky-Dweller in stainless steel with fluted bezel and blue dial.

It’s a watch that’s easy to talk about. Previously only sold in precious metals like white gold. They could easily reach 40,000 CHF but is now available to a broader segment of watch enthusiasts and collectors.

The new Sky-Dweller will be available in two different versions. One in a stainless steel with a white gold fluted bezel and blue dial and the other in Gold/Steel version with a champagne dial (black or white dial options are available too).

Could it get any better? Probably not.

It comes with exactly the same movement as the previous models, the 9001 that still holds the mark for the most complicated Rolex movement. Also the dial now has a much more clean and legible appearance. With the Roman numerals replaced with long rectangular hour markers and the hands are now longer too. This will end up making the dial much more cleaner and for a watch with such a large ‘sub-dial’ and many complications, that`s a great move. I believe it’s fair to say that Rolex did a great job with this release.

But there’s one thing that keeps me thinking, although Rolex released this new novelty making the model more “affordable”, Isn’t that doing more harm than good for the sake of the brand?

People may not care or think this way, but at some point if brands don’t acknowledge this they will end up being a brand that “everybody has” and more exclusive buyers will start to look elsewhere for the exclusivity.

When it comes to vertical marketing Rolex sure knows what they’re doing, but I see Rolex falling asleep with their enormous profits while other brands seek for innovation. Well, back to the Sky-Dweller, this novelty will be priced at a starting price of 13.500 CHF for the blue dial version, and the two tone Sky-Dweller will have a starting price of 16.300 CHF.