Wednesday, December 23, 2015

One Step up and Two Steps Back

"The American psyche is in turmoil Drew, and we have miscalculated."
Alec Baldwin - Elizabethtown

By now, it is likely you have heard about Maurice Lacroix's latest decision to shift direction once again and "go back to the future" by focusing on quartz watches.  This is starting to emerge as a somewhat uncomfortable pattern for the brand.

After deciding that the future was "high end" mechanical, dare I say it... manufacture pieces, the man with his hand on the tiller has decided to change course yet again and pointed the boat downstream.

When you make a decision that quartz watches priced at around $900 - $1700 are selling quite well, you are being observant of market trends.  When you make a decision that therefore you need to make a pretty large bet that you can now occupy that space with Raymond Weil, well then it is clear you did not learn your lesson with your migration to high-end, and pretty soon the barbarians are going to be marching into town and taking your livestock.

Apart from anything else, what Maurice Lacroix is suffering from is an identity crisis of nearly epic proportions.  And to those of us who write about these things it looks as if they are essentially trying nearly anything, hoping that something is finally going to "click".

It is not every brand or brand leader that will try to pivot so frequently, and I want to be clear - I sincerely hope that this new plan will work.  I am not a fan of failure for anyone.




1 comment:

  1. Sounds like a failure to me, do you know how hard it is to sell a Raymond Weil quartz watch?

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