Success Stories
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A2B Tracking Solutions
A2B Tracking Solutions, a U.S. leader in scanning technology for companies such as Target and the United Parcel Service, aims to make life easier for businesses. The company found early success in 1994 when the company developed label-generating software for retail giants K-Mart and Wal-Mart.
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Advanced Financial Services
Advanced Financial Services is a residential mortgage lender and a pioneer in alternative financing. For more than two decades, AFS has helped homeowners across the country reach their financial goals by unlocking the hidden equity in their homes, eliminating their high interest debt and providing them with the extra spending money they need.
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American Printing
From concept to execution, American Printing (AP) works with retailers of all sizes around the world to deliver high quality media related products and value-added creative fulfillment solutions. In fact, AP supplied the die-cut laminated iPhone product information sheets that customers see in AT&T stores all over the country.
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Amgen
Originally founded in 1980 as AMGen (Applied Molecular Genetics), Amgen pioneered the development of novel and innovative products based on advances in recombinant DNA and molecular biology. Now, Amgen is a leading human therapeutics company in the biotechnology industry.
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Andera
Until 2000, the idea of making the account opening process for banks and credit unions an integrated technology was unfounded. Then came along Andera, a Brown University start-up that has blossomed into a leading service provider of integrated account opening processes.
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BatchBlue
Pamela O'Hara remembers the exact "ah-ha" moment for her company BatchBlue and its flagship online contact manager called BatchBook. It came while she was painting Disney characters on a refrigerator box turned princess castle that she was creating for her daughter's birthday party. Having just finished a consulting job for a local publishing business, O'Hara thought about how unsatisfied she was with the expensive and challenging customer relationship management solution that the company jerry-rigged to fit its specific data needs.
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BBN Technologies
It’s not uncommon to see empty offices at BBN Technologies’ branch in the Middletown Corporate Park. In BBN’s case, a quiet office means a busy office.
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Biomedical Structures
Warwick-based Biomedical Structures (BMS) is not your typical Rhode Island textile manufacturer. They are a full-service contract manufacturer of permanent and resorbable implantable biomedical fabric structures; providing their clients with design, engineering and manufacturing services. Through companies like BMS, Rhode Island's long established textile industry is witnessing a new emergence.
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Bullard Abrasives, Inc.
Over the last 10 years the bonded abrasives industry has witnessed a significant shift in production in favor of low-cost producing nations such as China. These events have impacted prices to such an extent that many U.S. producers have ceased to exist. Bullard Abrasives, Inc., refuses to be a casualty of this market shift.
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Carousel Industries
Imagine sitting in a skybox at a Red Sox game. You order a soda, hot dog and popcorn and faster than you can say 'Go Big Papi' your order is right in front of you. An instant order experience is now possible via a new communications system installed within Fenway Park which allows skybox wait staff to send orders wirelessly to the restaurant and a waiting service runner. Who makes this wonderful experience possible? Rhode Island's own Carousel Industries.
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Concordia Fibers
Founded in 1920 as a manufacturer of silk yarns, Concordia Fibers, a Coventry-based textile company, now occupies more than 100,000 square feet of manufacturing space and has grown to become a leading producer of synthetic yarns and threads for traditional textile applications.
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Contech Medical
In 1987, Rhode Island native and entrepreneur Ray Byrnes was on a mission to solve a problem. He wanted to create user-friendly spiral wound dispensers for guide wires/catheters and stents for critical medical applications such as cardiac catheterization and open heart surgery. Byrnes tamed these previously unwieldy devices by creating a unique dispenser that allowed the guide wires to be inserted and contained inside these spiral wound dispensers. Byrnes’ product innovation put his company — Contech Medical — on the road to success.
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DIGI[cation]
DIGI[cation], a surprisingly simple and easy to use learning community, dismisses the constraints of a set class time and enables teachers and students to discuss assignments, access information and ask questions 24/7. Because DIGI[cation] was built and fine-tuned by educators, the software does not require the complex training synonymous with last-generation educational software.
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Dominion Diagnostics
Founded in 1997, Dominion Diagnostics provides comprehensive drug testing, technical support and data management services for addiction medicine/substance abuse rehabilitation, pain management, psychiatric practice, primary care and other medical specialties.
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Electro Standards Laboratories
In a world crowded with thousands of companies and consultants calling themselves communication or control specialists, Electro Standards Laboratories is truly unique. At ESL, they have the ability to work from theory to product or service design to manufacturing and installation. Their solutions are based on more than thirty years of technological experience and thousands of real world applications.
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EpiVax
Dr. Anne De Groot and business partner William Martin founded the biopharmaceutical company EpiVax, Inc. in 1998 with a $75,000 grant from Rhode Island’s Slater Technology Fund. Since then, the two have steered the company to become a leader in computational immunology.
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Equity National
In 1989 when Equity National was founded, they were the first to bring title and closing services to New England's multi-state market and among the first in the region to combine appraisals as part of its complete package of services. Since then, EQN has grown to become one of the largest settlement agencies in the region, with offices throughout the East Coast.
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GyPSii
It’s no secret that phones are getting smarter. With the launch of the iPhone and similar smart phones, consumers can e-mail, surf the web, listen to music…and talk on the phone. Now, mobile software is getting smarter. The “mobile social networking” market, which includes Warwick-based company GyPSii, is clamoring to be the next Facebook or MySpace for mobile.
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InQuest Technologies
InQuest Technologies, founded in 1997 by Michael Colapietro and Jeremy Carr, is a successful 35 person IT company located in Providence. Originally based in Massachusetts, the partners chose to move to Providence to take advantage of the city’s high caliber information technology and digital media community as well as its centralized location between Boston and New York.
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Insure My Trip
If finding a travel insurance quote for your next vacation was as easy as getting car insurance quotes online, more people would buy travel insurance, right? InsureMyTrip.com, a travel insurance comparison website based in Warwick, is betting on it.
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LFI, Inc.
Established as LFI in 2003, the company started as a laser contract manufacturer for aircraft engines, but has recently been manufacturing stainless steel components for medical devices. "We changed the way we were doing business - for the better," says LFI Vice-President Roland Benjamin.
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Lighthouse Computer Services
When Tom Mrva started Lighthouse Computer Services in 1995, he believed that a regionally-based organization, staffed with the most experienced people in the industry, could help Lighthouse's customers achieve bottom-line enhancing strategies.
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Monitise Americas
When Lisa Stanton was recruited to head Monitise Americas in 2007, Rhode Island was her logical choice for the company’s North American headquarters. Stanton, a New Hampshire native who previously worked for Citizens Financial Group, had lived in Rhode Island for more than a decade and she knew that within the state were great resources she could tap.
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Neocorp
In 2007, like many manufacturing companies, Neocorp was falling victim to the changing external environment brought on by continued globalization. But after starting RIMES' Lean 101 program, the company was reaping the benefits of team building and functional area integration.
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Neurotech USA
Neurotech USA, a privately-held biotech company located in Lincoln, has developed a pharmacological product to treat various chronic retinal diseases. The company's main product, NT-501, applies the company's Encapsulated Cell Technology (ECT) which allows for a consistent flow of state-of-the-art retinal medication to the back of the eye.
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parsonsKellogg
Sometimes, innovation is evident in the simplest form. Take local promotional product company parsonsKellogg. In 2001, fresh off a stint as a sales manager for Nike, Rhode Island native Tom Kellogg started parsonsKellogg with a six-color golf logo machine and one employee - himself. Now, with 22 employees, parsonsKellogg is the one-stop shop for big corporations to buy and design their promotional products.
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Pilgrim Screw
In 1941, while World War II was raging, a small Rhode Island company was holed up in the owner’s basement making jewelry findings such as rings and earrings. As the war progressed, materials became scarce and the company was forced to make its own screws for its products. Soon, the government stepped in and started buying screws for crucial military and aerospace needs.
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ProvPlan
In 1992 the Providence Plan (ProvPlan) set out to improve the economic and social well being of the city of Providence. To achieve this ambitious goal, the group, founded as a partnership between the state, city government, and private sector, took an interesting tack: use data to help people better understand the city and the needs of its residents.
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QualityMetric
Imagine a world where you can predict and better understand your risk of being afflicted with a chronic illness or disease without a clinical visit or being poked and prodded. Now imagine knowing all of that after filling out a short survey.
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ReBrand™
Anaezi Modu, founder of ReBrand™, defines a rebrand as more than an updated logo or new corporate colors. Instead, she says, an effective rebrand is about the repositioning, redesign, or revitalizing of existing brand assets to meet strategic goals—a process that includes a thorough re-evaluation of all experiences that define the brand.
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Rite-Solutions
For many people, work is a drag. For Jim Lavoie, it's a game – literally. Lavoie, CEO of Rite-Solutions, utilizes a mock stock market called "Mutual Fun" in which employees of the information technology firm are given $10,000 in fantasy money to invest in various "stocks" – in reality, technologies, products and cost-saving measures they think Rite-Solutions should be focusing on.
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Signal to Noise
Signal to Noise co-founders Jay Kooger and Mike Viele, both accomplished musicians, were fed up with the confusing web of the rules and regulations associated with music licensing. Before they founded Signal to Noise in 2005, buying royalty-free music usually meant buying low-quality tunes.
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SIMULIA
Earthquakes, helicopters and athletic shoes are but a few of the real-world challenges that keep SIMULIA, based in Providence, developing and providing the most sophisticated realistic simulation software in the world. Their technology solves some of the toughest engineering problems and offers solutions that few other companies in the world can match.
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Social Venture Partners Rhode Island
Social Venture Partners Rhode Island (SVPRI) combines the skills of successful businesspeople with the ideals of nonprofit organizations, creating an opportunity for engaged philanthropy that benefits everyone.
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Sonalysts
Sonalysts, a Middletown defense contractor founded in 1973 as a sonar analysis company doing work for the U.S. Navy, has taken its internal modeling and simulation talents and merged them with digital media and production studios to work with clients such as G-Tech, Hasbro, Kerzner Enterprises and more.
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Taco
Founded in 1920 by the current president's grandfather, Taco prides itself on its "customer-centric" service. Taco delivers exceptional quality because it has been owned and operated by the same family for more than eighty years; a family whose dedication to its customers, products and employees has never wavered. Taco develops and manufactures hydronic-based components for use in heating and cooling applications across the building spectrum.
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Tellart
Using visual communication, contemporary design techniques, and good old fashioned story telling, Providence-based Tellart specializes in producing interfaces that align information with human experience to create interactive and user-friendly ways of sharing information.
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The Corporate Marketplace
Staying relatively invisible has worked out nicely for Chris Crawford and his e-commerce company, The Corporate Marketplace (TCMPI). Since 2000, when Crawford started TCMPI, the company has been growing at an astronomical rate by connecting online buyers and sellers of jewelry and other products.
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Tizra
Established in 2006, Providence-based Tizra is creating a new way to sell electronic content and giving publishers control. AgilePDF, Tizra's first product, is a flexible web application that gives publishers the ability to price, package, market and sell their content with the speed and agility that the web demands.
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TPI Composites
Not many manufacturing companies can claim that they can meet their client's exact design requirements. Good companies come close and mediocre ones miss the mark, but TPI has been successfully using a process known as SCRIMP®, which consistently produces a superior quality, highly structural, large composite part while eliminating harmful VOC emissions for more than ten years.
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Working Planet
Soren Ryherd’s brainstorm came after a dinner with colleagues in 2003. That evening, the group agreed that paid-search online advertisements would be “the next big thing” on the Internet.
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Yushin America
What started out as a small company in the original owner’s garage has now morphed into a multi-million dollar leading supplier of robots which manipulate everything from biohazard bins to cell phone covers and cosmetic cases — Yushin America.