Welcome to the business of watches, the Hohdinky podcast where Horology meets high finance,

and we go behind the scenes to discover what pays the bills in the watch industry. I'm your host,

Andy Hoffman. This week, we're in Geneva to talk to Federico Ziviani, the CEO of Gerald Charles. Now, Gerald

Charles is a smaller brand in the sector. They've got plenty of history recently and a direct

link to one of the most revered names, Gerald Jenta. It's a family-owned brand that requires a bit of explanation.

What is this brand? How does it relate to Jenta and the other Gerald Jenta brand we might know

that's been revived by LVMH? Ziviani gives us the backstory, how his family worked with Jenta in the latter stage of his career,

and how and why they took the brand back to consumers in retail beginning in 2019.

He also answers our questions about the Gerald Charles pricing strategy and what he says the brand and its watchmaking bring to the

table. But first, let's discuss some recent business-related headlines in the world of watches.

It's just me this week. I promise we'll return to our guest host format next week.

So Swiss Bank von Tobel published an in-depth report on the Swiss watch industry that estimated that Rolex,

the top brand trimmed its production or allocation to dealers in 2025

for the second year in a row. At the same time, the Swiss Bank estimates that Rolex

strengthened its dominance in leading position in the sector, accounting for about 61%

of the sales for Swiss watches priced above

3,000 francs. Now, this is the kind of report that I love and I love to get into, and it was

quite interesting to sort of comb through what Von Tauel, which is an important but smaller bank

here in Switzerland, had to say about the industry. Now, it certainly shows and underscores

the sort of bifurcation that's happening in Swiss watches. Rolex remains the dominant brand with sales of about 10.4, almost 10.5 billion francs in

2025.

And Von Tauble does suggest that Rolex either sort of trim production or potentially held back some allocation to its authorized

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