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  New Reef VP of Sales Jay McGregor - Photo courtesy of Reef

Reef has hired a new sales leader with a wide range of experience in the outdoor industry.

Jay McGregor is the new VP of Sales for the Americas and APAC regions.

Jay is the third VP-level hire at Reef in the past 18 months, and rounds out the leadership team that includes VP of Product Tom Cooke and VP of Marketing Mike Matey.

Jay served as VP of Sales Americas for Gerber Gear and also held senior sales roles at Birkenstock and Coleman. His career also includes stints at Spyder, Teva and Adidas.

Reef President Jeff Moore said Jay’s role will focus on driving a year-round business in all key product categories, maintaining the brand’s commitment to surf culture while extending its reach to consumers outside of core action sports, as well as the implementation of Reef’s new segmentation strategy launching in Spring 2015.

“We are well versed in and deeply connected to action sports,” Jeff said. “We needed a VP of Sales who brings outside expertise.  Jay’s background will be a great asset for our brand as we continue four years of solid growth and look to accelerate that growth through our new segmentation strategy.” 

SES asked Jeff for some more information about the new segmentation strategy.

“We have a complete Spring ‘15 sandal line that is segmented by where the consumer navigates and shops – core, mall, sporting goods, etc.,” Jeff said. “For example, in core, we’ve protected key styles as well as made specific core shop styles that will be exclusively for the core consumer visiting key surf shop destinations such as HSS, Hansen’s, Surfride, Val Surf, 17th St, Aqua East, Jack’s, Wavelengths, etc.

“We need to continue to protect the core surf shops by ensuring we are differentiated by channel as well as continuing our in-store investments,” he said. 

Greg Osthus, who has been with Reef for four years, will continue to manage all independent action sports sales reps and work closely with the visual merchandising manager to service core accounts.

SES also asked Jeff why Reef has switched to having VP-level executives lead business units instead of the director-level model that was in place before.

“The primary reason for making VP investments at Reef in key departments is for business, leadership, and strategic planning experience,” he said. “Each leader brings his or her view from a different place where they’ve had great success as well as failure.  They also have an understanding of where we came from as a brand and where we desire to go as it relates to consumer reach.”

“Our executive team is complete now and I’m proud of the work they continue to do on behalf of the brand,” Jeff said.