Quark Loses Major Leader

Another top executive, Sr. VP of Strategic Relations, leaves Quark.

Creativepro​.com editor-in-chief Terri Stone reports in an arti­cle today that tomor­row will be the last day for Quark’s Susie Friedman, senior vice pres­i­dent of strate­gic rela­tions. With a gala event planned to launch QuarkXPress 7 on 23 May, Friedman’s depar­ture on the 12th is inter­est­ing timing.

Although Friedman will con­tin­ue to work with Denver-based Quark, Inc. in an “advi­so­ry role on unspec­i­fied spe­cial projects,” her replace­ment has appar­ent­ly yet to be named. Similarly, 11 months after the mys­te­ri­ous depar­ture of Kamar Aulakh, Quark has yet to name a new CEO.

Some believe Friedman will not be the last high-level exec­u­tive to depart the com­pa­ny before things set­tle down. Gene Gable, an indus­try con­sul­tant and author of sev­er­al arti­cles on QuarkXPress for Creativepro​.com, is quot­ed as say­ing: “I think there’ll be more key staff depar­tures at Quark…If you agree with the premise that Quark has not been a par­tic­u­lar­ly well-run com­pa­ny, you can’t be freaked out when one of the top peo­ple move on.”

We tend to agree with Gable’s assess­ment, but impor­tant ques­tions still linger in our minds. For one, how many more offices will be vacat­ed before Quark begins to fill them again? And, for anoth­er, were the depart­ed exec­u­tives part of the prob­lem Quark is try­ing to fix, or were they try­ing to solve the prob­lems the rest of Quark upper man­age­ment does­n’t want fixed?

What do you think? Read Terri Stone’s arti­cle, and then give us your opin­ion on Friedman’s depar­ture and what you believe to be the future of Quark.