Originally Posted by Nav01L
The thing with AP is that they just have a dismal marketing approach. They are still selling watches today like they did in the early 2000ds with Arnold, but it’s no longer to draw people in, it’s only to be seen shoulder to shoulder with whatever flavor of the day celebrity has some street cred at any given time.
The approach of their AP houses is a rather demeaning concept in the first place, given where it locates the customer within the relationship.
The same is true of how they launch their watches.
And for the more volume oriented ones, also of how they make them.
It is saddening for sure as it remains a fantastic brand with some great products and great people.
But they have to fix a lot, from how their SAs deal with customers, to how they do allocations, to how they finish basic movements.
At this point, while it’s great of them to give Benahmias a proper sendoff, I‘m sure the family is looking forward to a new era. He has grown this brand significantly and had many achievements that deserve actual credit, but all too often, they have been overshadowed or, in the case of the 11.59 launch, completely voided, by hubris and a lack of basic „decency“ in addressing those that needed to be excluded to make things exclusive.
It’s fine if you cannot or do not want to sell everyone a watch. But perhaps treat everyone with enough respect regardless.
It’s fine if you completely mess up the launch of a new product line by putting your ego and desire for a „show of force“ in the way of how you could quite obviously have made this a success if you had released the uber complications first and waited a few years with the pedestrian movements. But perhaps don’t take that out on people forcing them to buy the thing you’ve made undesirable through your ineptitude, while making it more undesirable in the process.
It’s all so evidently displaying a lack of self assurance. An assurance btw that, ironically, the brand would have every right and reason to have. Especially if they fixed some what are, taken individually, minor issues and if they put a little more energy into making watches properly and a little less effort into desperately trying to look super exclusive while doing so.
Ultimately, if what we’ve seen publicly and at events is any indication, many of the problems may well be an expression of the CEO‘s personality. Hopefully it’s that, and not a broader culture.
With all that said, I genuinely appreciate the brand, have just spent the greatest amount of money I have ever spent on a watch for an AP and truly hope things change for the better over time. I‘m not trying to hate on the brand, I want it to do better, because it seems so damn easy in this case.
|