Fraser Townley

Fraser Townley is a British entrepreneur and original creator of Gamevice.

Fraser Townley with Stan Lee

Early Life

Townley was born in Cambridge, England in the spring of 1962. The family moved to the north of England in 1965 to the town of Southport then south to Hemel Hempstead in 1973.

Early Career

Townley pursued a career as a retail buyer at J. Sainsbury on advice from his uncle graduating from their Store Manager training program to trainee buyer in 1982. In 1984 Townley approached Dixons Stores Group to pivot from grocery buying to consumer electronic buying. In 1986, Townley was head hunted by Kingfisher Retail where rose through the ranks to become Director of Direct Sourcing based in Paris.

Creating Gamevice

In 2011, Townley joined a small group of entrepreneurs who founded Wikipad. Most of 2012 was spent developing a 10" tablet with detachable game controllers but the product never made it to market leaving the company drained of resources. During this time, Townley invented the idea of two halves of a controller attaching to two sides of a smart device connected with a flexible bridge. 2013 saw Wikipad launch a lower cost 7" tablet with detachable controller which, although critically acclaimed, was not successful. Later that year, Apple announced iOS 7 would incorporate controller support so the company, lead by Townley, focussed on its second pivot to creating a controller for Apple. Townley felt the Wikipad brand name was too associated with tablets so, therefore, created the brand name Gamevice.

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamevice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsK2-w5Ta2g

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