Thule, Inc. is restructuring its sales and service organization to help meet Thule’s worldwide growth objective, set in 2004, to double the company size to over $875 million by 2007. As part of the restructuring, the company also announced the hiring of Schuyler Horton as Director of National Account Sales and Service and a number of promotions within the sales organization.

As a result of the restructuring, the Sales and Service organization will consist of five teams. The Specialty Accounts, National Accounts, and Customer Service teams will serve US customers, while a single Sales and Service team will handle Canada. The OES Sales and Service team will manage all North American original equipment business.

“The strategy behind our new structure is to create a system under which we can better concentrate on our dealers’ needs in specific markets and provide them with improved service,” said Tripp Wyckoff, VP Sales & Service. “We are very excited to have Schuyler Horton joining Thule and to announce the promotions of several of our team members. We are confident that with the team we have assembled, combined with our new organizational structure, we will fulfill the needs of our customers and meet our corporate objectives.”

Schuyler Horton, who starts with Thule today, has a broad range of domestic and international account and management experience, and will lead the National Accounts, USA team dedicated to large key accounts. Horton joins Thule from Cascade Designs where he was most recently the VP of Sales in the Outdoor Division. National Account Sales Managers Bob Marsh and Michael Moore, previously Southeastern Sales Manager, will both report to Horton.

To improve service to its core business, Thule has created the Specialty Accounts, USA team which will concentrate on its US specialty bicycle, outdoor, ski, watersport, automotive and truck accessory retailers. The team will be lead by Larry Hewett, who has been promoted to Director of Specialty Account Sales. In this new capacity, Hewett will be responsible for all sales representative groups and will be splitting time between Thule’s Seymour, CT, headquarters and the Thule Mckinleyville, CA, office.

With the acquisition of SportRack and the forthcoming separation from Sport Dinaco, that had been marketing and distributing Thule products in Canada, Thule has established a Sales and Service team based out of its Granby, QC facility. The team will be lead by rack market veteran Andre Clement who has been appointed Director of Canadian Sales and Service. Reporting to Clement will be Martin Cardinal, Canadian Sales Manager, and Annie Scopel, Customer Service Manager.

Thule’s Original Equipment Supplier (OES) business has seen steady growth and with the acquisition of SportRack the size of this business segment has nearly doubled, the company said. To continue growth in this category the OES Sales and Service, North America team has been formed and will be lead by Tom Chimenti who has been promoted to Director of OES Sales and Service for North America.