We address the question whether the condition on a fusion category being solvable or not is determined by its fusion rules. We prove that the answer is affirmative for some families of non-solvable examples arising from representations of semisimple
Hopf algebras associated to exact factorizations of the symmetric and alternating groups. In the context of spherical fusion categories, we also consider the invariant provided by the $S$-matrix of the Drinfeld center and show that this invariant does determine the solvability of a fusion category provided it is group-theoretical.
