Why Purchase From Overseas Authorised Dealer?

A reader whom previously missed the purchase of one of my Rolex watches as he was concerned about any warranty claims in Malaysia, given that my watch was purchased from an overseas Rolex AD, wrote to me over the weekend to ask if the watch was still available as he had checked with Menara Dion and was informed that Rolex Malaysia would honour any warranty claims provided the said watch was still under its international warranty period (as evidenced from the dated warranty card). Unfortunately, the watch had since been sold for a few weeks now so he would just have to seek elsewhere.

And there upon lies the question- why would I purchase from overseas AD when I could also purchase the same watch model locally?

Rolex prices were manufactured-controlled worldwide, and differences in pricing between AD to AD would not differ by too much. However, for repeated customers, ADs were able to take a small hit on the margin in order to keep the relationship going. Also, some countries tend to have faster stock turnover, so the ADs don't mind a small discount to keep the stock rolling. And importantly, there's the VAT refund that could be claimed by tourists' purchases.

I normally prefer watches in stainless steel; but one that I would buy in two-tone would be the Submariner 116613LB. To me, that was a handsome watch; although it tend to be a slow-moving flipper compared to the 116610LN Black and 116610LV Hulk. Rolex ADs locally could hardly get stock on this piece, so it would go at retail at circa RM55k; and I even saw a grey reseller shop selling a NOS at RM52k (!) at a shopping centre at USJ yesterday. Goodness gracious, few years back around 2013 when MYR was still relatively stronger, this model was only going at RM33k from grey resellers!

(Sigh, I should have gotten a piece of the 116613LB back then...)

I travel quite a fair deal (almost monthly in fact) so I could make good purchases from overseas ADs on many occasions- and some of the countries that I have gotten good deals from were at Hong Kong, UAE, and Europe.

The English economy post-Brexit ain't not doing too great these days, and my friends there informed that there were many good deals going about on monthly basis. Many times, retailers were prepared to just sell to get the cashflow going. Therefore, I checked online to gauge if there was any good pricing on the 116613LB and this looked like one of it :

After conversion, the piece would be just short of RM50k. Some may argue that you could probably negotiate for the same price through the local grey retailers, and you would be true... but there's still the 20% VAT refund that could be claimed at the airport, so the final price of the piece would amount to RM39,800. Of course, you would need to factor in an additional 6% GST when you pass through KLIA and declare the said purchase.

And because of the rationale that I tend to get my pieces cheaper through such manner, I could then flip the piece some time down the road and not take a huge beating in my capital spent. And that was also the reason why I could always priced my pre-owned watches lower than the market prices; and the reason why my watches tend to move quite fast pursuant to an advert. So now, you know.