France Just Fined Rolex $100 Million for Banning Online Watch Sales

It may soon be just a little bit easier to buy a new Rolex in France.

The Swiss watchmaker has been fined $100 million by the country’s antitrust agency for effectively banning its authorized dealers from selling watches online, Bloomberg reports. While the company claims its offline-only sales model is “justified by the need to combat counterfeiting and parallel trade,” France’s Autorite de la Concurrence rejected that argument.

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On Tuesday, the regulator issued a ruling saying that Rolex’s policy violates French law, and amounts “to closing a marketing channel, to the detriment of consumers and retailers, when online distribution of luxury products, including watches, has been booming over the past 15 years.” In addition to the nine-figure fine, the company has been ordered to inform its retailers of the decision and to leave a summary of it published on its website for seven consecutive days within the next two months.

The decision appears to come in response to the rollout of its much-touted Certified Pre-Owned program, which allows authorized dealers to sell Rolex watches online. The program, which at once helps Rolex gain better control of its wares on the secondary market, also assures collectors that they’re getting an authentic product. In July, a Watchfinder & Co. study found that half of the luxury watch market was said to be made up of counterfeit Rolexes. At the time, the company’s CEO Arjen van de Vall told Bloomberg, “Rolex is the most aspirational luxury watch brand and [has] the highest demand, hence, it’s the most replicated.”

Still, there are plenty of often-copied high-end brands that don’t sell their new wares online. You can’t, for example, purchase a Chanel handbag without talking to a real human being, and getting your hands on a Royal Oak requires an in-person visit to one of Audemars Piguet’s authorized dealers. Rolex may well challenge the ruling. But if it stands, it may unlock the door for more online sales of hard-to-get luxury goods.

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