Fortress Eyewear’s CEO, Sean Sullivan has announced the appointment of eyewear industry veteran Curt Fry as the company’s Vice President of Sales and Marketing effective September 19, 2016.
Most recently, Fry was the VP Sales and Global Merchandise for VonZipper and Dot Dash. During a 15-year relationship with VonZipper, Fry was a sales rep, sales manager and eventually went on to oversee development of product and sales globally for sunglasses, snow and moto goggles, optical frames and apparel for the premium and open sell eyewear brands.
Fortress Eyewear markets under the Kreed and Crush brand names, and is the only action sports eyewear company with distinct men and women’s brands. CEO Sullivan stated: “Kreed and Crush have grown tremendously in recent years within the specialty retail channel, and we believe that Curt Fry has the knowledge, relationships and skills to lead us to greater success. Our ‘open sell’ eyewear at specialty retail is a proven moneymaker and is breaking all of the traditional profit models in the eyewear category. Curt understands this and will bring a very high level of sophistication and leadership to our sales and marketing programs.”
Reporting to the CEO, Fry will manage the US sales team, including full-time staff and 20 independent sales reps covering all 50 states. He will oversee all aspects of marketing – B2B wholesale and D2C retail. Fry will also work closely with the CEO on identifying strategic opportunities for expanding business with existing and new retail channels. Fry replaces Alex Connelly, who managed domestic sales for Fortress for the past two years and left recently to pursue other interests.
“Fortress has done a smart job building its base business in core specialty retailers across the country,” commented Fry recently, “ and it is my plan to further build upon this base, deliver high margin, high turnover and highly profitable business to our retail partners, and to be a part of an organization that enjoys working as a team to achieve the company’s short and long term goals.”
