TechnoMarine Watches CEO Vincent Perriard Jumps Ship

It has been a crazy couple of years for Vincent Perriard. About 18 months ago he suddenly left his CEO position at Concord watches to join TechnoMarine during their brand "relaunch" (which I discussed here). Things seemed to be going quite well. The charismatic Perriard had some very good ideas for the brand and their new direction as exhibited last March during Baselworld 2010 seemed positive. Now at the end of 2010 news has suddenly come in that Perriard left his CEO role at TechnoMarine. What happened?

TechnoMarine's new vitality is more or less attributed to a capital injection by Christian Viros, who presumably worked with Perriard to get him aboard. In a very short amount of time Perriard was able inject TechnoMarine with a new lease on life with a relatively strong new design direction as well as the clever "Ocean Addict" marketing campaign. Just as we were all looking forward to seeing what would come in 2011, he suddenly left. Under Perriard in 2010, TechnoMarine reportedly grew by 34%.

According to TechnoMarine, the break was peaceful, and instead of lining up another CEO, Christian Viros will step in and take a more lead role in the management and direction of the brand. Perriard is rumored to claim disagreements with the TechnoMarine board who presumably shared fundamental differences of opinion with him on the direction of the company. Sources further indicate that Perriard is working on a new project. Something "post crisis," which seems to allude to a higher-end luxury project that will shows its face when economic times are (hopefully) soon better.

Ariel Adams publishes the luxury watch reviews site aBlogtoRead.com.