Lanham, Md.-based custom framing tech startup Framebridge is only a year or so old but is plotting for major growth in the coming year. That's why Framebridge has brought on former Zappos and Teespring executive Anthony Vicars to be the new vice president of operations. Vicars' experience in the cutthroat world of e-commerce could provide valuable insight to stabilizing and scaling up the company.
"I'm an operations guy, and every business has different needs, but I see this as an opportunity to do something special," Vicars said in an interview with DC Inno. "It's great to find a business where the customers have an emotional connection to the service."
Vicars joins the company just six months after it raised $7.7 million in a round led by Revolution, and a month after the firm created a custom gallery-wall creation service to go along with its framing. It's in that context that Vicars will now be responsible for improving the operations of the company to make the entire process as seamless as possible for customers and employees.
"We feel very lucky to have found Anthony," said Framebridge CEO Susan Tynan. "We did an executive search and it moved really quickly, it only took about a month. Now that he's joined us, we really feel like we have the wind at our backs."
"It's great to find a business where the customers have an emotional connection to the service."
Vicars lives in Kentucky, but will commute to Maryland for work. Along with improving Framebridge's current system, Vicars will also be helping plan the opening of new production spots, overseeing their construction and operation. The goal is to create 50 new jobs in manufacturing for Framebridge in the next year and a half or so.
"Distribution is really where it counts," Vicars said. "As operations mature it has to be changed to address the unique needs of the company. The first thing is to stabilize the process, and then to scale. There's no limits after that."
