June 12, 2012

Larry Doyle Promoted to President of Conair 

Larry Doyle, who joined Conair six years ago and served most recently as Vice President of Global Sales & Marketing, has been promoted to President. The announcement was made by Chris Keller, who held that position while also serving as President and CEO of Conair’s parent company, IPEG.

“Since he came to Conair, Larry Doyle has been extremely effective in leading the Conair brand and developing our position globally,” Keller remarked. “He spearheaded the successful launch of our business in India. He deserves much of the credit for our remarkable growth in Asia and Latin America, and he has strengthened our leadership position in North America. As President of Conair, he will now also be able to focus his managerial skills on further developing our capabilities to better satisfy our customer needs and market demands.”

For his part, Keller says that he intends to work on strengthening the IPEG shared-services model, which provides manufacturing and other support to IPEG’s two major brands, Conair and Rapid Granulator. Looking further ahead, he will focus on identifying growth opportunities for the group and supporting on-going development of the Conair and Rapid brands.

Larry Doyle looks forward to “driving more of the customer voice into everything we do in the Conair organization. We are committed to elevating our customers’ performance by delivering innovative processing solutions with exceptional quality and customer service.”

Doyle began his plastics industry career in 1995 as International Sales Coordinator for Autojectors, a manufacturer of vertical injection-molding machines, which became part of Milacron Inc. in 1998. Prior to joining Conair in 2006, he was Director of Sales and Marketing for Demag Plastics Group (now Sumitomo Demag). Despite recent turmoil in the world economy and dramatic consolidation in the U.S. plastics industry, Doyle has helped Conair to considerable success. In addition of helping found the Nu-Vu Conair joint venture in India and expanding business in East Asia and Latin America, he implemented a team-marketing approach in growth industries like packaging and medical. He oversaw the launch of a new upstream-extrusion product group and initiated a major overhaul of the Conair sales organization, bringing in Steve Petrakis, a long-time plastics industry executive as Vice President of Sales – U.S. and Canada. Together they built a new staff of regional sales managers and product managers, and reorganized the company’s corps of independent sales representatives. As the economy has rebounded over the last two years, Conair has consistently exceeded forecasts and enjoyed robust year-over-year sales.

In addition to his Conair duties, Doyle also serves on the Equipment Council of the Society of the Plastics Industry and chaired the Sales & Marketing Committee for NPE 2012 and NPE 2009.  He holds a BA in Political Science and Philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.