By WALE AKINYEMI

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I recently watched a video on YouTube, where Rolex watches were being sold for up to $1 million. In fact, when the watch connoisseur was given one that cost $85,000, he and the dealer both agreed that the price was great. In fact, they said it was cheap.

So how does a company produce items or provide services that remain relevant for over a century?

In 1905, a young 24-year old revolutionary and visionary named Hans Wilsdorf worked on building a company that would specialise in making timepieces worn on the wrist.

He wanted his watches to have a name that was short, and easy to say and remember in any language, and which looked good.

The Rolex website quotes Wilsdorf saying, “I tried combining the letters of the alphabet in every possible way. This gave me some one hundred names, but none of them felt quite right. One morning, while riding on the upper deck of a horse-drawn omnibus along Cheapside in the City of London, a genie whispered ‘Rolex’ in my ear.”

From this simple beginning Rolex has grown into a luxury global brand.

So how did a company like Rolex deal with the disruption from companies like Apple and others who were making smart watches; In a world where one-function gadgets like conventional watches seemed to be on the way out?

In a world where consumers seem to want watches that tell the time, track your fitness, connect to other devices and even make calls.

Despite this Rolex sales were worth $11.6 billion around the world in 2018. Rolex now accounts for 22.2 per cent of global watch sales, according to a 2018 Morgan Stanley report.

When watches like the Apple watch first made their debut, the excitement shot them to the top of global watch sales. However the timelessness of a Rolex timepiece and other similar luxury watch brands has worked in their favour.

Rolex has many firsts. For example, in 1910, a Rolex watch was the first wristwatch in the world to receive the Swiss Certificate of Chronometric Precision, granted by the Official Watch Rating Centre in Bienne. Rolex was the first to create a waterproof and dustproof watch named the Oyster.

In 1927 Mercedes Gleitze, an English swimmer crossed the English channel in 10 hours wearing a Rolex Oyster. The watch was working perfectly even at the end of the swim.

On September 4, 1935, when Sir Malcolm Campbell broke the world land speed record, he was wearing a Rolex.

In 1953 when Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of Mount Everest, they had on a Rolex Oyster Perpetual.

Rolex also pioneered the Submariner, which was the first watch to reach a depth of 100 metres.

In 1955 as intercontinental air travel became more popular, Rolex was there with the GMT-Master, which could tell the time in more than one time zone. It is with continuous innovations like these that Rolex has remained relevant.

They were not just making watches. They were making watches for each season in history and each event in history. They were making watches for icons of each era. They have remained relevant through association.

They positioned themselves as an aspirational brand that every ambitious dreamer wants on their wrist.

Be it at a global sporting tournament or a luxurious event or television show, Rolex has maintained its relevance by always being at the right place at the right time and getting the right partners to wear their watches. As long as there are powerful and important people on earth, it seems the future of Rolex is secure.

If you are not researching for the future, you will be a relic and a prisoner of the present.

A study of the most enduring brands like Rolls-Royce, Hermes and others that have remained relevant for up to a century shows that the one thing they all have in common is that they are constantly researching for development.

A culture of research is the bedrock of development. A culture of research is the insurance against irrelevance. A culture of research is the only way that tomorrow can be better than today.

Where research is ignored, nations, organisations and individuals are consolidating their position in the present and losing the hope of the future.

Wale Akinyemi is the chief transformation officer, PowerTalks.