I recently learned that the CEO of Audemars Piguet Americas (APA), Ginny Wright, was departing the legendary watch brand. A tabletop model of the AP "Starwheel," photo taken at AP House NYC. The new CEO of AP Americaa will be Louis-Gabriel Fichet, who joined AP in 2020. I learned about this development from an online watch publication whose editor opined on the matter. I feel obliged to respond to that piece because I think it reveals some concerning biases in watch industry coverage, biases which will only diminish if we talk about them openly and honestly.
There were three critiques of Ms. Wright's time at the helm of APA that jumped out to me. First was the allegation that Ms. Wright suffered a "sudden removal." Subsequent to this critique, Ms. Wright posted on her Instagram account that she is "returning to the world of prestige beauty and stepping into a global CEO role." Moving from a regional executive position to a global one is not indicative of a "sudden removal." Rather, it's a natural move which probably involved headhunters of some sort who matched Ms. Wright to her new job. If true, that suggests Ms. Wright was recruited out of AP, not pushed out. As I write this, the original post about Ms. Wright's departure has not been updated with this new bit of information.
The second allegation regarding Ms. Wright is that she "failed to understand" AP's business and instead made APA "all about celebrities." The "failed to understand" critique is concerningly aligned with gender stereotypes assigning "brilliance" and "genius" to men rather than women. In my mind, there is no evidence that Ms. Wright did not understand AP's business model and the critic did not present any compelling evidence to support his claim. While it is certainly true that AP involves celebrities in their marketing, that approach predated Ms. Wright, continued during her tenure, and continues to this day with initiatives out of AP headquarters in Le Brassus. For example, AP partnered with Arnold Schwartzenegger on many different watches well before Ms. Wright joined APNA (see, for example, this one). John Meyer's appointment as Creative Conduit for AP was undoubtedly a decision made out of headquarters (I have no doubt Ms. Wright was involved in that process but I do doubt that she alone made that decision). Former AP employee Michael Friedman was name checked by Kendrick Lamar in one of his songs, another AP celebrity connection which probably had little to do with Ms. Wright. Lamar released "Rich Spirit" when Ms. Wright had only been in her position 18 months. It is certainly possible that Ms. Wright cultivated a friendship between Friedman and Lamar during those months to the point where Lamar decided to include Friedman's name (rather than Wright's name) in a track, but I very much doubt it.
The third critique involved APNA's decision to relocate its service center from Florida to North Carolina. An AP pocket watch, photo taken at AP's museum. I wrote about this decision back in 2023. I don't think anyone has any basis to determine whether this move is good or bad. There is data showing that home insurance costs in North Carolina are about half those of Florida. So any home owning APA employee who moves can likely save money by leaving Florida. And, North Carolina provided some nice revenues to AP in order to induce the move. Those monies include financial training incentives from the state and a Business Investment Grant from the city of Raleigh. My point is that there are some important upsides to the move.
I was curious about whether the relocation had been cancelled in light of all the critiques above. I do not believe that is the case. In June, AP advertised multiple jobs in North Carolina, including watchmakers, human resources, and client-facing positions. If they had cancelled the move then I would say there is some evidence that APNA had perhaps stumbled. But they seem to be going ahead with the plan (I reached out to AP for comment on this piece and the new service center but as of this writing they have not responded).
In short, I do not believe the current critiques leveled at Ms. Wright are accurate, fair or defendible. I do believe it is fair to criticize, but I do not believe it is fair to rely on tropes, scapegoat, and inaccurately hypothesize. In 2023, women occupied only 8.2% of CEO positions at companies in the S & P 500. There is no reasonable basis for this under-representation other then bias. We should all be aware of that fact when we consider industry developments.
My book on the history of Rolex marketing is now available on Amazon! It debuted as the #1 New Release in its category. You can find it here.
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