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ECenter@LindenPointe Nurtures Tech Startups
HERMITAGE, Pa. -- Artist Mike Sakony and his partner, photographer Linda Smiley, drove past the eCenter@LindenPointe every day and wondered whether the incubator in Hermitage, Pa., would be a good fit for his business.
After a year of working out of his basement – and months of prodding from his father – Sakony arranged a meeting with the executive director of the eCenter, Yvonne English. He and Smiley presented their plan, and by April, Blissed Out Design was one of the newest tenants at the incubator.
“As you can see, it got real cramped in the basement,” Sakony says as he points to the stacks and boxes of designer tiles that line his spacious office and workshop at the eCenter.
As its core business, the company uses a combination of materials and technology to transfer images onto travertine tiles used as drink coasters, Sakony says. Many of the images reflect nostalgia associated with Pittsburgh – Roberto Clemente, Forbes Field, early 1900s University of Pittsburgh football, Iron City Beer – and sell very well at local art shows and fairs.
Now, the couple would like to take their products to an entirely new level: marketing to other cities and regions over the Internet while creating a wholesale customer base of retailers, Sakony says.
“One of the reason we’re here is to develop the wholesale side of the business,” he says, “and Yvonne has made contacts for us.”
Blissed Out Design is one of seven companies and organizations that now operate out of the eCenter, a $5.5 million nonprofit business incubator that opened at the LindenPointe campus in January 2012. The city of Hermitage, through the five-county Oh-Penn Interstate Regional Collaboration, secured $4.2 million in federal funds and another $1.25 million from the state to support the project.
“We’re basically full,” reports the eCenter’s English. “We have one small suite that we can use for another company. We’ve gone from empty to 60 miles per hour here.”
English says the business model for the eCenter is slightly different from other incubators in larger metropolitan settings in that it accepts companies in the very early stages of development.
“Some of our entrepreneurs have come to us with just ideas and without a business plan,” she notes. “We’ve been rewarded from taking those. The goal is viability, and what that means is that the companies can exist outside the incubator.”
The eCenter provides business counseling and coaching, low rent, office equipment and technical assistance mostly to tech-related startups and young businesses that otherwise would lack access to these amenities, English says. The objective is to provide these entrepreneurs the necessary early lift so they can concentrate on their core strategies of seeing their companies grow, developing products and, most of all, creating jobs.
“I’ve seen 130 entrepreneurs over the last 2½ years,” English relates. “It’s everyone from college students to others working in jobs with an idea to start a business.”
However, not all of these ideas correspond with the raison d’etre of the eCenter – to promote the growth of companies involved with science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, English says. “A lot of them just aren’t ready or don’t have products that fit with our STEM mission,” she says.
The eCenter factors in several criteria before deciding whether to accept an application for space. “We look for the scalability of the idea, how much market testing they’ve done, the feasibility of the idea – we really like to kick the tires on it,” English says.
And, companies are evaluated on their ability and willingness to be mentored and coached, the director says. While the eCenter provides a menu of support services such as Internet, Class A office space, computer labs, and office equipment, she emphasizes that the organization’s mentoring and business development program is just as essential to launching, promoting the growth of, and sustaining a business.
“I don’t know everything about every industry,” she notes. “I assess the clients and help them with their milestones. Then, we figure out a mentoring team that works for them.”
As an example, English points to tenant company Rooted Beauty, a consumer skin-care business that needed a strategy to get its products into retail stores. “We brought in different mentors to help them understand slotting fees and market tests within a certain region,” she recalls. “They’re in 150 stores right now.” The company fit the incubator business model because of the science behind developing the product.
Other companies, such as Microchip Technology Inc. (formerly Novocell Semiconductor) are entirely tech-related.
“We create and license nonvolatile memory” used in microprocessors, says Michael Compeau, marketing officer of the company. The service allows data to be retained, for example, in a mobile device when a battery pack is removed.
Novocell, the first company to locate at the eCenter, was acquired in July 2013 by SST Inc. a division of Microchip. Despite the transition, the company has said it wants to remain in Hermitage and the eCenter.
“We just had the vice president of engineering out here last week, and he reasserted the fact they they’re committed to maintaining this location,” Compeau says.
Andrew Pavlick, owner of Pixelque, is the newest addition to the eCenter, moving into office space last May. The eCenter, he says, proved the perfect match for his company, which designs 3-D digital characters for game applications and companies that provide virtual speech pathology services.
“I started as a freelancer while at another job, but now I’m on my own and more established through the eCenter,” Pavlick says. On this August afternoon, Pavlick is working on the computer image of a propeller aircraft that’s part of a new mobile racing game application he’s designed. “It will be for Android first and then hopefully move it to IOS,” he says.
Other tenants have relocated from larger metropolitan areas to the eCenter. They say they are better positioned to expand their companies and services.
“I was based in Pittsburgh,” remarks Linda Richardson, founder of All Clear Translations. “I toured the center and thought it was a fabulous idea and location.”
Richardson’s company specializes in translating operating manuals, technical brochures, websites, and software into two or more foreign languages for manufacturers. “It’s been great,” she says, “since I’m now in the middle of the manufacturing hub and have clients in Ohio.”
Richardson says All Clear Translations uses human linguists and translators all over the world to translate documents used in everyday business, which is far more accurate than many of the Web-based translation services on the market today.
“When you’re dealing with companies that are doing safety manuals, operating manuals, medical device companies, it has to be very accurate,” she says. “If we’re translating into German, my translators are in Germany.”
Another important component of the eCenter’s mission, English says, is to facilitate introductions between client companies and potential investors. “We don’t have any equity stake in our clients,” she notes, “so we’re able to stay objective.” English and others at the eCenter help these entrepreneurs with presentations to the regional investor community. “I have a network of investors who are interested in companies,” she says, “so when companies need to raise capital, I make the introduction.”
Since the eCenter opened, 42 full- and part-time jobs have been created, English reports. In all, 19 companies have received support from the eCenter – whether as a tenant or as an affiliate client – while 17 student teams have used the eCenter’s Grove City College Venture Lab to further their work.
The connection with Grove City and other colleges and universities in the region is all part of the eCenter’s objective to encourage entrepreneurship among younger people, English says.
College internship programs and high school programs sponsored by the eCenter, English notes, are essential in building a young, vibrant business community. The organization’s new publication, Millennial Spark, will be distributed in nine nearby high schools and three colleges.
The goal is to target millennials and inform them of the opportunities to hold good, tech-related jobs in this region as well as opportunities for building their own businesses.
“You can’t just pluck entrepreneurs and expect to continue to have a pipeline, you have to grow entrepreneurs,” she says. “We think it’s vitally important for young people to stay in this region.”
Pictured: Linda Smiley and Mike Sakony moved their coaster company, Blissed Out Design, from Sakony’s basement into eCenter a year ago. Now, they’re looking to market in new regions.
Copyright 2014 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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