Copyright 2003, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

Ducati North America is scrambling after a cross-country move of its headquarters and the subsequent departure of CEO Joe Piazza, a little more than one year after he took control of the company.

The company has just finished moving its headquarters from Pompton Plains, New Jersey to Cupertino, California, near San Francisco; only one New Jersey-based employee made the move to California, leaving the bulk of positions to be filled by new hires.

Piazza had no OEM experience when he was hired to run Ducati North America; before taking the job he was Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Global Motorsports Group/Custom Chrome, an aftermarket company. His first day as CEO of Ducati North America was February 5, 2002.

Piazza’s departure comes on the heels of news that Ducati’s revenues dropped in the latest fiscal year; a Ducati press release referred to the Italian company as being “burdened by the restructuring of our U.S. subsidiary.”

Nicola Greco, who was Ducati Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing when he hired Piazza in the first place, is expected to take over the reigns of Ducati North America. When he introduced Piazza to the press in February 2002, Greco said “I was not happy with the performance of the overall U.S. operation. Since it is our most important market (and) I know the U.S. quite well, I just put by my side my global sales and marketing role and took over the States for a couple of months to select a new manager and to restructure the company. These things happen. They’re normal corporate things.

“Basically, companies go through periods where they need to re-assess what they are doing. We looked at what we were doing in the States, and we came to the conclusion that the time for change had come…After many years of growth, we came to a stop last year, and there were many reasons for that.”

Fast-forward to 2003, and the company is making more changes.

An official announcement of the latest changes is expected by Monday.