Frameri wins $100K from AOL founder Steve Case, moves into OTR office

To say that the Frameri has been busy would be an understatement.
 
Since entering the Brandery a year ago, the versatile eyewear startup company has grown from a team of two co-founders to five full-time employees and four part-time employees—with a few more new hires in the pipeline. In May, after having split his team between Chicago and Cincinnati, CEO Konrad Billetz decided to move the entire team back to Cincinnati and just last week signed a lease on a new office in Over-the-Rhine that will put his entire team under one roof.
 
In June, Billetz, along with seven other entrepreneurs, pitched in front of a packed crowd at the Know Theatre that included AOL founder Steve Case. The pitch event was part of Case’s Rise of the Rest Tour in which local startups competed for funding (highlights from Case’s Cincinnati stop can be found here). After a brief deliberation, Billetz was named the winner and took home a $100,000 investment from Case’s venture capital firm Revolution.
 
“It was really great to get selected as the winner and receive the investment, but for us that was more about validation than anything else,” Billetz says. “It helps to get more people to know what were doing; now we just need to get out there, work our assess off and prove that they were right to pick us.”
 
If the past year is any indication, Billetz and his team are ready to put their collective noses to the proverbial grindstone. This week marks the official launch of the Frameri’s first line of product, which is based around creating quality, crafted frames with interchangeable lenses to bring style into the industry and waste out of it.
 
“We’ve had three goals since we started,” Billetz says. “First, to shake the eyewear industry up, which we see as really boring. Second, to make people smile by delivering really awesome product that genuinely deserves to exist. Third, to add lots of jobs and create a really cool culture. We want to be one of those jobs that people really want to work at—not just in Cincinnati, but nationwide.”
 
To that end, Frameri is currently on the lookout for designers, digital marketers and web developers.