CEO Fabian Krone Leaves Lange.

After months of industry gossips, Fabian Krone has finally decided to leave Lange Uhren to pursue his career elsewhere.

Unconfirmed rumour has it that Fabian made his decision known last week but will only be announced today. While nothing is official, our source told us that Lange and Fabian have decided to part ways for the mutual benefit of both parties.

More details later.

Jaw



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/21/2009 09:30AM by Jaw.

All texts as supplied by Lange Uhren.

Glashütte, 21 September 2009

As a result of strategic differences of opinion over the future direction of A. Lange & Söhne, Mr Fabian Krone has intimated his decision to stand down as Chief Executive Officer of the company.

Richemont regrets but respects Mr Krone’s decision.

Mr Jerzy Schaper, who up until now has been Chief Operating Officer of A. Lange & Söhne will take over with immediate effect as interim Chief Executive Officer.
A. Lange & Söhne was acquired by Richemont in 2000. It has a strong management team and a highly motivated workforce and will continue to play a significant role as one of Richemont’s leading specialist watchmaker businesses in the future.

I think mr.Krone will be missed. In his period Lange followed the perfect line in my opinion... both technical developments of the high degree one might expect from them and stay close to their own design style, not falling for the seduction of trying to be fashionable.

I do hope this is something that will remain the same....

Cheers,
Frank
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Certainly, I think Mr. Krone will be missed by fans like us who have known him for many years and have grown to appreciate his very gentlemanly demeanor.

As a brand and a company however, Lange watches have built up a reputation like no other and the quality of finishing remains unrivalled by any other traditional haute horlogerie brand. I am certain the CEO change is unlikely to affect the strong brand equity much.

The challenge ahead for the new management will be tough and personally, I think several problems need to be tackled head-on very quickly.

Personally, I have some concerns on the followings (I will intentionally be very brief and not go into details):

1) Distribution: For a brand with very limited production, grey market should be easy to control, for the same reasons, there is no need to have too many point of sales/retailers
2) Product development review.
3) other....

However, I guess the new management should have identified all the problems by now and the brand should be in good hands and in my opinion, it can only grow stronger.

Jaw

Lange Uhren Gmbh Interim CEO Mr. Jerzy Schaper.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/23/2009 06:30AM by MarkS.

Sorry to hear this, i believe that Mr. Krone made a huge job during the past years.

It would be interesting to understand the real reasons behind this decision, since leaving this topic in the shadow worries a bit...Especially when thinking of the future of a succesfull brand like this.
My first thought - and concern - is that once achieved success and reputation, the temptation to have easy gain based only on a brand name and no more on extreme quality might became a reality.
By other hand, i also think it would not be wise to waste the patrimony of latest year.....So we just can wait and see how the future for A.L&S will be....

Regards,
Slide68

Certainly all of us remember Fabian fondly.

However, it is also obvious that everyone at Lange and Richemont understand clearly that the Lange product quality cannot be compromised.This knowledge and commitment is quite easily observed and I am very confident that the quality will continue to be exceptional.

For all of us who like Fabian, we also have our heart very close to Lange and we think that there are still room for improvements. Perhaps a change may not be bad at all.

Jaw