Luxury / news
Rubber Straps Emerge as the Repeat Purchase for Rolex, Omega and Cartier Owners
Owners of five-figure watches are turning to rubber and composite straps as the one component they can change themselves, and watchmakers have spent a decade building tool-free systems to make the swap easy.
The economics of luxury watchmaking rest on a single sale: a customer who pays five figures for a Submariner or a Santos de Cartier is, for years afterward, a customer who has already bought. Straps break that pattern. They wear out, follow the season and the wearer's mood, and can be replaced without a watchmaker's bench.
The major houses moved early. Rolex launched the Oysterflex in 2015, a rubber-clad metal blade that first appeared on a gold Yacht-Master and has since spread to the Daytona and the Sky-Dweller. Cartier rebuilt the Santos in 2018 around QuickSwitch, a tab hidden under the strap that releases it without tools, and now ships both a bracelet and a leather strap in every box on the assumption that owners will alternate between them.
Others followed with their own systems: Hublot's One Click, IWC's EasX-Change, and Patek Philippe's Aquanaut, which has been offered on a composite strap since 1997. Fitting remains reference-specific, as the curved end of a strap is cut for one case flank and no other.
The reasons owners give for leaving the steel bracelet in the safe are practical rather than aesthetic. Daily wear leaves polishing marks and stretch that dealers factor into resale pricing. Steel also feels heavy in Gulf or Mediterranean heat and becomes uncomfortable after a swim, when salt dries inside the links.
Cost is the final argument. A strap priced at roughly 70 to 140 dollars is described as the cheapest available way to make a ten-thousand-dollar watch feel new again.