Fracture, a Gainesville small business success story, announced on Friday that it has hired Herb Jones, a local online marketing leader, as its first chief marketing officer.
Jones, 43, is a University of Florida alumnus with more than a decade of experience in digital marketing who comes to Fracture from his own SEO, social media and email marketing company, Online Potential.
Fracture, founded in 2009, is a startup that has developed a proprietary manufacturing process for printing digital photos directly and indelibly onto glass. These vivid “Fractures” are specially packaged to arrive backed and instantly ready to mount.
“We cannot be more pleased to have someone with Herb’s deep experience and passion for technology and e-commerce join our team,” said Abhi Lokesh, co-founder and CEO of Fracture. “He brings a much-needed dimension to our marketing operation at a time when the company is experiencing rapid growth.”
“After meeting Abhi, Alex and others at Fracture, I knew right away that this was a rare opportunity to apply what I’ve learned over the last decade to an organization whose product line can measurably benefit from my core marketing competencies,” said Mr. Jones. “What’s more, it’s rare to be able to work for such a fast-growing startup in my hometown of Gainesville.”
“I’ve been following the company for years and in that commoditized space they really have a unique value proposition,” he said. “They’ve also done a good job of building a customer-centric business, from order to production to shipping.”
Jones said that while the new marketing initiative will primarily focus on Internet marketing, the strategy will branch in other directions, like Fracture’s new national television commercial, which can be seen here.
From 2007 to 2009, Jones served as director of business development for Marketing Sherpa/MEC Labs of Jacksonville Beach, Fla., a market research firm that publishes marketing case studies and benchmark data. Prior to that, he spent two years at Orlando-based Mojo Interactive, a full-service web development firm. He started his career at Gainesville-based EMS Computing where he rose in the ranks from sales manager to director of operations to managing director over a six-year period. He graduated the University of Florida in 1999 with a Bachelor of Science degree in food science and human nutrition.
