MELVILLE, N.Y.—Marchon Eyewear announced the appointment of Nicola Zotta as vice president and managing director of EMEA region. Zotta will be responsible for the company's sales and marketing, along with operations within Europe, the Middle East and Africa. This includes export and distributor sales within the region.

Zotta will report to Claudio Gottardi, president of Marchon and CEO of Marchon International. Zotta has over 13 years of industry experience with the Sáfilo Group, most recently as the group director of marketing and licensing. He has directed operations for Sáfilo's subsidiaries in France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg.

"Nicola joining the Marchon team is key to strengthening our global strategy from both a brand perspective and distribution standpoint," said Gottardi. "We are looking forward to implementing aggressive growth plans in the European markets."

Zotta's professional experience includes management of sales, finance, information technology, logistics and directing marketing and brand strategy.

"I look forward to working with Claudio and the rest of the Marchon team," stated Zotta. "Marchon's growth plans are ambitious and we will work hard to capitalize on opportunities and further position the company as a global leader."

A native of Italy, Zotta received a degree in Economics and Business from the University of Trento in Italy, and an Executive Masters of Business Administration from Essec Business School in Paris. He is based in Amsterdam.

Andy Skitmore previously managed Marchon's EMEA region and Nike eyewear business. He will now focus entirely on his role as the company's senior brand executive for Nike. "We appreciate Andy's leadership of our EMEA business since 2006. We are looking forward to Andy being able to focus exclusively on the growth opportunities for our Nike eyewear collections," said Al Berg, CEO of Marchon Eyewear.