Freestyle News

August 1, 2002. Ventura CA-Freestyle a leading manufacture of watches for the board sports and fitness market announces a consolidation of their operations with their parent company, The Advance Group. The Advance Group acquired Freestyle and FADA Industries nearly 2 years ago to become one of the largest watch manufactures in the world.

Freestyle Team Rider, Cory Lopez

Freestyle USA announced plans today to consolidate their support functions with their parent company, the Advance Watch Group, to their East Coast office, which produces the Kenneth Cole and Tommy Bahama watch collections. The timing of the consolidation is slated for December 1, 2002.

The consolidation affords Freestyle USA the ability to focus its California based team on sales, customer service, marketing and design, while providing the platform to grow the company through expanded resources and greater sourcing abilities.Freestyle will remain in Southern California and function autonomously in regards to design, sales, marketing and customer service support.

Freestyle USA has recently brought in Billy Berger as Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Berger's in-depth knowledge of the core board sports market and years of athlete and event marketing management will help solidify Freestyle's leadership position in its core accounts. Berger will focus most of his energy on reorganizing the sales and marketing team with a priority of developing innovative sell through strategies that support Freestyle's dealer commitment to their brand.

Berger, a native of Hawaii and a UCLA business school graduate not only brings Freestyle a keen perspective of the surf and board sports industry but also a fresh outlook on athlete relationship management and event marketing strategies. As the CEO of the Association of Volleyball Professionals (AVP), Berger had numerous opportunities to work with key marketing executives of multi-national companies and gained valuable insight as to what creates the "vibe" behind the brand.Over the past 12 months Freestyle has ramped its core athlete team, evolved its advertising communication, and launched several industry leading products.

Jimmy Olmes, President of Freestyle USA, said; "Over the past several years I have seen the industry, as a whole, redefine itself numerous times. Being part of the original Freestyle company, I am ecstatic that Freestyle has the resources afforded by our parent company, with our core heritage intact, to expand into the new wave of business that our industry is enjoying."

Freestyle Editorial Contact: Christy Parsons805-984-0114, 805-444-1253 cellcparsons@freestyleusa.com