Fox Pairs Helpful Attitude With Top-Tier Experience

Ted Fox believes when people are supportive, kind and genuinely helpful when there’s nothing in it for themselves, they will find success linked to a positive reputation.

This philosophy has taken Fox, 49, from executive status at one of the country’s most iconic clothing brands, to the front page of The Wall Street Journal, to founding his own retail marketing services agency. 

Bentonville-based Clear Choice Retail is a marketing and sales solution company translating ideas into results for retailers, suppliers and agencies.

In his previous jobs, working for brands that include Oral-B, Pennzoil Co. and Levi Strauss & Co., Fox witnessed first-hand the frustration of marketing ideas being lost in translation on the execution side. The four-person Clear Choice Retail team specializes in unifying the process of producing in-store promotions. 

Fox was Pennzoil’s vice president of sales to Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Sam’s Club when he was featured in the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s 2002 Forty Under 40 class. However, just a few months later, he was tapped by Levi.

In 2007, after successfully launching the new brand into Walmart, Fox said he exited his role as vice president of Walmart sales for Levi amid emptying layoffs at Levi and leadership turnover at Walmart. In Fox’s mind, as “captain of a ship,” it would have been wrong for him to have kept his job. He felt like his work in bringing the two entities together was done, and that it was time to move on.

According to Fox, he put a good deal of energy into helping those who were laid off at Levi find jobs, but he also did not leave empty-handed.

During his time at Levi, Fox said he learned from the best, especially in the realm of sustainability and responsible sourcing. 

Walmart was also taking cues on those practices from the now 162-year-old company, and it was through Walmart that Fox became acquainted with Sustain LLC, which became his next project. He was partner at the company, which focused on regeneration of the textile industry, from 2007 until 2013.

Fox moved to Bentonville in 1997, when he worked in sales for Oral-B, a Gillette brand.

Before that, he worked in New York City, Chicago, and North Carolina, where he graduated college and met his wife.

He earned his bachelor’s degree from Elon University in mass communications in 1987, but then continued his education in 2011 by earning his MBA in sustainable business from Marylhurst University in Portland, Oregon.

Fox said the program afforded him the opportunity to, again, learn from the best, as he had a professor that was on staff at NASA and his environmental law teacher was at the time an attorney with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Fox completed the program online, while also working.

“It was so stinking hard,” Fox said. “It took me two full years to finish, but I went at it hard.”

Throughout this time, since 2004, Fox also has done side projects with his company, Stonebridge Consulting Inc.

Fox recently celebrated his 27th wedding anniversary and has 18-year-old twins, a boy and a girl.

And he believes in giving back to the kids of the community. He is a longtime board member of the Boys & Girls Club of Benton County, foundation board president for the Benton County Sunshine School Inc., and sustainability committee member for Will Golf 4 Kids Tournament, which benefits the Arkansas Children’s Hospital.