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Comment by hayksaakian | Hacker News Reader

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."

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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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