Art Fried, Arthur Fried
WHO IS ART FRIED
Art Fried grew up in Brooklyn, New York, the eldest child in a large Chasidic Jewish family. Being the oldest of eleven children he was thrust early on into a position of leadership and that sense of responsibility and caring has carried over into his adult life. You can ask any of his many past employees and they will tell you that Art Fried has always had a sense of family and caring for not only them but for his business associates and clients as well.
Brought up believing that anything was possible if you worked hard and were upfront in your dealings with others, Art Fried developed his entrepreneurial spirit early on and continues to fine-tune his out-of-the-box thinking approach to doing business. He is a creative thinker and when he recognizes a need, he moves quickly to fill that need. This was first evident early in his career when he decided to forgo a traditional education and instead dove headfirst into the business world. There was a need in his community for reliable advertising, creativity and he threw himself into the advertising world, learning at the knees of the experts who became his mentors. This resulted in the creation of Art Fried and Company which thrived for the 17 years that Art owned it and is still going strong today after he transferred it to his employees. During this time he also was on the cutting edge of the ATM business. When ATM’s were new and scarce he jumped into the business and filled that void.
During his advertising days Art Fried handled a myriad of nationally and locally based businesses and his crowning achievements were spear heading the introduction campaign and rollout of Tofutti, the number one selling nondairy dessert and his long standing relationships with Pepperidge Farms, Baldwin Piano’s and Ethan Allen.
In early 2002 Art Fried decided he needed a change and sold his business interests in New York, packed his bags and headed west to the Valley of the Sun. He had the luxury of being able to settle into Phoenix and take a long hard look at the opportunities. He recognized early on that there were a number of huge opportunities in the real estate market. The market here was booming, prices were soaring and people were making money hand over fist buying and selling real estate. Art Fried was able to look past that simple fact and recognized that there were many more opportunities then just buying and selling and that the signs of a downturn in the market were happening. His out of the box thinking steered him in another direction which we will deal with in following articles.