Building the Fry brand with potential customers, partners and the local community
Fry provides powerful e-commerce solutions. Fry Inc. was a pioneer in the e-commerce industry, building the first e-commerce site for Godiva Chocolatier in 1994. The company grew rapidly as e-commerce emerged and survived the dot-com bust of early 2001.
Challenge: As Fry looked to build on its success and expand, it selected Airfoil Public Relations as its public relations agency in 2002. Airfoil was tasked with building the Fry brand with potential customers, partners and the local community.
Solution: Airfoil developed a thought-leadership campaign to emphasize Fry’s extensive history in e-commerce and build the profile of founder David Fry.
Airfoil coordinated the public relations effort to support the launch of Fry’s Open Commerce Platform™ (OCP). The J2EE-compliant, license-free platform was built entirely by Fry and required extensive education for media and analysts. OCP was featured in a Computerworld cover story in conjunction with the launch and Airfoil highlighted subsequent client launches on OCP as well as major milestones.
As Fry undertook a major initiative to expand beyond retail clients to manufacturers, Airfoil supported the program with bylined articles and industry thought-leadership quotes about the e-commerce opportunity available to manufacturers. Airfoil also developed announcements showcasing early successes Fry had with manufacturers such as Whirlpool.
Airfoil elevated Fry’s profile in both the trade and national media verticals, targeting outlets that would reach potential Fry customers. Airfoil highlighted David Fry’s background as a Harvard professor and e-commerce pioneer to national media and positioned him as an e-commerce expert.
Results: Fry’s growth and leadership in the e-commerce industry have continued and the company has expanded its client list extensively with both retailers and manufacturers.
Open Commerce Platform has become one of the of the industry’s leading e-commerce solutions with more than 90 implementations by major retailers since its release.
David Fry has become a turned-to e-commerce resource by national media, raising the profile of Fry Inc. as an e-commerce authority with potential retail and manufacturing clients.In 2008, he was featured in a Wall Street Journal Front & Forward story where he provided three viewpoints on trends in e-commerce. Around the largest online shopping day, Cyber Monday, Fry was quoted back-to-back days in USA Today about Cyber Monday projections and results. He has also been quoted about e-commerce trends in the New York Times, Investor’s Business Daily, The Financial Times, Forbes.com and other national outlets.
Fry Inc. employees are quoted extensively in trade publications such as Internet Retailer and MultiChannel Merchant and regularly invited to contribute bylined articles that showcase Fry as being on the forefront of industry innovation.
In 2009, Fry’s success resulted in it being acquired by MICROS Systems, Inc. The company became a wholly owned subsidiary of MICROS Systems, Inc. and part of the MICROS-Retail group. As the company continues to grow under the management of MICROS, Airfoil continues to support Fry’s expansion with a comprehensive communications program.