Ruff Wear is expanding its marketing team and sales force in North America to meet the needs of customers in both the outdoor retail and specialty pet markets. Due to the company's rapid business development and its growing number of retail partners, it has announced plans to expand its sales and marketing forces to support those strategic initiatives.
To help drive this expansion, Ruff Wear tapped Gary Fleshman, director of sales, to also oversee the marketing and overall brand strategy. The company will also hire a brand marketing manager and category sales manager to further strengthen the organization.
“Americans now spend $41 billion a year on their pets and Ruff Wear's strategy for capturing more of this market is now defined. Our continuing success in the pet care industry is a result of Ruff Wear's dedicated employees. We are pleased to announce the promotion of Gary Fleshman to director of sales and marketing,” said Will Blount, Ruff Wear's vice president.
“Gary's extensive sales management experience at Nike and Intel is directly aligned with the company's vision to grow the brand while carefully managing the distribution of Ruff Wear products across a variety of key categories. Acting as director of sales this past year, he helped evolve the company's sales foundation to prepare the organization for future growth. In this new role, he's responsible for developing Ruff Wear's sales and marketing strategies, including critical programs targeting outdoor and pet specialty retailers. His efforts will not only strengthen the company's brand position as the performance dog gear leader but re-energize our marketing efforts overall,” said Blount.
The new brand marketing manager and category sales manager positions will also help Ruff Wear expand in the outdoor retail market and the pet industry. The category sales manager will be a key position within the organization, responsible for adding resources to grow the various sales categories and educating customers on why choosing Ruff Wear is a profitable business decision that will translate into sales and life-long relationships with customers and partners. “We're projecting exciting growth for the company over the next five years. This individual will be responsible for optimizing revenue and profit by product category. The position was also created to ensure product and category communication and integration across the internal and external organizations is seamless,” said Gary Fleshman, director of sales and marketing.
The brand marketing manager will serve a critical role in developing and implementing overall brand and retail marketing strategies. “Given the demand for travel and outdoor gear for dogs continues to increase, this is the year to put all our marketing efforts towards building the brand and reinforcing Ruff Wear's passion for dogs and love of the outdoors,” said Fleshman.
