Meanwhile...Back At Hodinkee...

And then there were ten...

Things continue to shift in curious directions at Hodinkee.  After a very public announcement of a back to the roots shift to media only, and an imminent exit from retail, a visit to the masthead yesterday afternoon revealed the absence of at least one (possibly two) people who had been there recently. I checked again this morning to confirm it. And one very notable absence is that of the CEO, Jeffery Fowler.

Now for the faithful who follow the comings and goings in Watch Town, this stirs the usual amount of curiosity. Has Mr. Fowler indeed departed? If so, it wouldn't have been the worst thing in the world for Hodinkee to acknowledge his contributions and wish him the best moving forward. This is one of the curious things about Hodinkee's approach to communicating with their followers. There's an insistence of what a big happy band of brothers and sisters they are, and then an almost Stalin-like erasure of departed staffers previous existence. They disappear without a trace, which only serves to engender the expected amount of social media chatter and antipathy that inevitably leads to more bad pr. 

Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images & AFP/Getty Images 

Now back to the matter at hand - if, indeed, Mr. Fowler has left Hodinkee, it makes a certain amount of sense as his background is not media, it is retail. And seeing as (at least this week) retail is off the table at Hodinkee, then it might be time to refocus and seek out senior leadership that might better fit the new approach. 

While this is not meant to be an attempt to rub salt in the collective wounds of Hodinkee and its investors who are probably cuing up Mojo Nixon's (Rest in peace, Mojo!) classic hymn, "Where The Hell's My Money?" as they watch their investment circle the toilet bowl, it begs the question - who actually has their hand/s on the tiller of the Good Ship Hodinkee?

Now contrary to what naysayers will, well, naysay, it is possible to run a profitable watch media business. But that media business has to live in the real world. Over the years it has been baffling to comprehend how having a staff of so many people, producing (on balance) such a small amount of content, and essentially refusing to interact with the majority of the watch brands in the world could be seen as a recipe for success. The more long term question that the shot callers at Hodinkee have to answer is how to recapture that spark, how to connect with the many brands they have snubbed over the years, and how to make it profitable. >$40,000,000 is not typically the amount of money most investors are willing to walk away from, because it has now coalesced into its very own sunk cost trap.

Mr. Fowler, if you have indeed left the building, we wish you God's Speed in your next venture.