Did You Know Domino’s Used To Give Out Branded Rolex Watches?

Brendan Menapace

There are few gifts that can carry as high a reputation and brand recognition as a Rolex watch. Even with a logo from a company much lower on the luxury ladder, like Domino’s for instance, a Rolex timepiece is a much-coveted item.

So, if you’re a Domino’s restaurant manager and the prospect of a branded Rolex is dangled in front of you in exchange for a certain sales threshold, you’d do just about anything you could to make that cut, right?

I know I would.

Domino’s put that very plan into place a few decades ago.

GQ gave some background on the Domino’s-branded Rolex, which not only is still a remnant from one very glitzy employee incentive program, but is now something of a grail for watch collectors.

Here’s GQ’s Cam Wolf:

In the early ‘80s, Domino’s partnered with Rolex to provide high-earning store managers with motivation to hit loft sales goals. Hit $20,000 in weekly sales and a watch printed with the bold red-and-blue logo right there on the dial was yours (eventually Domino’s upped the difficulty, demanding four consecutive weeks of $25,000 sales). Domino’s also engraved the Rolex watches with the recipient’s name and TSM, the initials of the pizza chain’s then-CEO Thomas Stephen Monaghan. Wind says that there were several hundred made every year. “They’re not rare, but they’re not common,” he says. “It’s somewhere in the middle.”

Rolex and Domino’s produced three different styles. One had a “more primitive-looking” box logo in the watch’s 6 o’clock space. The second, created in the ’90s, went with a smaller logo in the same location. Finally, the third produced a few years later used a tilted logo.

The Rolex model that Domino’s used was almost cheap by Rolex standards, selling between $1,000 and $1,500 a few years ago, but that’s still a very high-end corporate gift. And the name Rolex will always carry weight.

Domino’s and other pizza chains have used fairly over-the-top branding on products, but this is understated and mature. It’s a gorgeous watch with a small detail that, unless you’re really looking at it, you won’t notice from distance. And if you’re a Domino’s employee, it comes with the understanding that you performed at your job at a level that warranted such a gift.

Now, do all employee appreciation programs need to use brands like Rolex? No, not necessarily. You can obviously work within your client’s budget. But, you can use this as an example of elevating something like pizza sales. Just because pizza isn’t expensive doesn’t mean the act of selling it is cheap. This shows the employee that their work isn’t forgotten.

It also shows that logo placement can be prominent without being overpowering, sharing space with the Rolex logo and the functional face of the watch without gunking things up.

Related posts