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For those who skipped to the comments: They tried to prevent retailers from selling products first purchased from Rolex, and then sold online. "preventing its authorized dealers selling new watches online."

First paragraph of the article




In America, there is the First Sale Doctrine, which mostly(?) lets me do whatever I want with a product in my possession.

What is preventing some nobody from going to these authorized dealers (presumably with no-online-sales agreements), buying up their entire inventory, and then personally offering that online? Just the threat of fakes?


The lack of a profit margin.

An authorized dealer will sell the watch to you for retail value, not wholesale value.

You can go ahead and resell those online as much as you want. I don't see how you'll turn a profit though.


Bah. Especially for a veblen good where they can trivially institute huge price swings. This site (https://millenarywatches.com/rolex-markup/) claims Rolex has a 40% margin.

I suppose it only works if you can make a deal with the authorized seller to split the online proceeds.


Good point. You could probably charge a premium for convenience, but would be hard to make it worth it.


The dealer is unlikely to sell to such a person. It's an authorized dealer. They don't want to lose that status.


Rolex would presumably never again sell to the dealer that allowed one person to buy this much inventory.




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