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byline: Joan Tupponce

Device is designed to halt texting while driving

Clay Skelton has come up with a way to stop people from texting while driving.

As a result, his Roanoke-based manufacturing company, Origo, received the 2015 Rising Star Award in May from the Roanoke-Blacksburg Tech Council. “I was so honored to receive that award,” Skelton says.

The National Safety Council estimates 1.3 million accidents per year, about 24 percent of all traffic crashes, involve cellphone use and texting while driving. Cellphone-related crashes result in 3,200 deaths and almost half a million injuries annually.

“For those companies that have implemented our solution, they have not only saved lives and money but have actually changed the mindset of their drivers to a more responsible and safety conscious awareness of their own driving habits,” Skelton says. “And we feel that this is the greatest benefit of all.”

Skelton started Origo in 2010 with his best friend, Brady Sheffer. He was spurred into action by two news articles. One story described a vehicle equipped with a breathalyzer to prevent a driver from getting behind the wheel after too many drinks. The second story concerned a girl who died in a crash after texting while driving.

“The drinking and driving story had an effective solution, and the other one did not,” Skelton says. “If you look at data, [many accidents are caused by] people taking their eyes off the road. We thought that taking the phone out of your hand would prevent you from taking your eyes off the road.”

His company developed the OrigoSafe, an interlocking ignition system. It includes a cellphone docking station that can be mounted on a car’s dash or console. If the phone isn’t in the docking station, the car won’t start.

“That is a way to guarantee you won’t use your phone,” Skelton says. “It doesn’t prevent you from using [a hands-free Bluetooth system], you just can’t see your phone or touch it. The system has an antitheft device for the car as well.”

Origo, which has 11 employees, sells mainly to the commercial trucking companies in the U.S. and abroad. The company also is looking at the operators of school buses as potential customers.

“The majority of our customers are business customers with fleets of vehicles,” Skelton says. “We don’t do much of a retail business but the product is available retail.”

OrigioSafe costs about $399 with installation. It has seen a recent bump in retail sales, possibly from parents buying the device for children returning to school.

The company plans to introduce a new product this fall that will be less expensive.

Bizwiz program attracts awards, customers

Jesse Waltz spent some time searching for software that would help him better handle the day-to-day operation of his foundation repair business when he was traveling. When he couldn’t find anything suitable, he decided to create his own.

Today more than 225 companies in the United States and Canada are using his Web-based software product, Bizwiz.

KBH Business Management Systems, a Virginia Beach-based company Waltz and his wife, Stella, started in 2007, developed Bizwiz. The couple also own JES Foundation Repair, which they founded in 1993. “The software was born out of the need for up-to-the-minute reporting on everything associated with JES, from marketing for generating a sales lead to completing the installation of a job and collecting a check,” says Waltz.

The program provides information and also tracks the entire “cradle-to- grave process for each customer, from the time the customer asks about a product or service to the time of final payment,” Waltz says.

KBH, of which Bizwiz is a part of, now has about 35 employees and JES has a workforce of 240.

The Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce named Bizwiz its Small Business of the Year for Virginia Beach in April and then in June named it Small Business of the Year for the Hampton Roads region.  

Bizwiz is used by a variety of businesses, including contractors, painters and service companies.

“It’s for anyone who markets their service and schedules appointments for sales, installation and service,” Waltz says. “It lets people grow their business by knowing their business, because it gives them information on which to make sound business decisions, such as where to put advertising dollars, whether or not to hire more sales staff and whether or not to expand the installation team.”  

Mobile apps have been developed for salespeople, installers, service techs and owners, making the process paperless.   

Waltz conducts annual Bizwiz Summits at his Virginia Beach headquarters for new users of the software and established customers. He also offers private business coaching for owners.

Waltz says the software has helped him learn more about his business. “I can approach the business decisions I have to make with more confidence than I ever imagined,” he says. “The big picture with all of this is that Bizwiz helps other business grow, too. That, in turn, grows KBH and allows us to do more for even more contractors.”

New facility expected to boost turkey processing

The Virginia Poultry Growers Cooperative Inc. expects to be on the technological forefront of food processing when it completes its 80,000-square-foot, turkey processing facility, expanding its existing operations in Rockingham County.

In July the Cooperative announced it would invest almost $62 million during the next three years to construct the facility, which is tentatively scheduled for completion by the fourth quarter of 2016. The project is expected to create six new jobs.

The new facility in Hinton is expected to increase turkey-processing production in Rockingham by more than 44 percent. The cooperative began considering an expansion about four years ago. During the past two years, in fact, the organization, which includes 165 member-growers, has been turning down business because of a lack of capacity. The new facility will allow the cooperative to take advantage of new processing technology.

“We had some limitations with our current processing setups,” says John King II, the cooperative’s general manager. “We only process large tom turkeys [about 41 pounds each] and that makes us unique in the country. Our equipment can’t handle much beyond that.”

Established in 2004, the cooperative is the eighth-largest turkey processor in the U.S. and one of the largest processors of organic and antibiotic-free turkeys. It handles about 7 million turkeys a year at its existing 143,000-square-foot Hinton processing plant, which will connect to the new facility.

Agriculture remains Virginia’s largest industry, with an annual economic impact of $52 billion. “Within that overall industry, poultry is the largest individual sector, representing more than $6 billion in revenue and over 15,000 jobs,” says Todd Haymore, the state’s secretary of agriculture and forestry. “Shenandoah Valley is the leader in that.”

Rockingham County is the largest agricultural producer of in Virginia, with more than $1.5 billion in annual revenue from poultry, dairy, beef, eggs and grain. “Our agricultural roots run deep,” says George Anas, assistant county administrator and director of economic development.

Virginia competed against Pennsylvania for the turkey-processing project. The cooperative has an extensive bird-growing operation in Pennsylvania, but it eventually decided that the Rockingham site made more sense.

State incentives included a $500,000 performance-based grant from the Virginia Investment Partnership as well as a $250,000 grant from the Governor’s Agriculture and Forestry Industries Development Fund, which will be matched by Rockingham County over the life of the project.

The importance of the project is “not just the expansion of the plant but also the ripple effect for the member growers in the region,” says Carrie Chenery, executive director of the Shenandoah Valley Partnership. “It hits a lot of important points for our economy.”

Foundation to redevelop Danville buildings

Danville’s River District has quickly become an appealing place to live, growing from a population of 400 to more than 2,000 in the last 3½ years.

New residents have been attracted by the revitalization of the area. In the past four years, public and nonprofit organizations have invested approximately $30 million in the River District while private investment has totaled more than $100 million.

The Danville Regional Foundation wants to continue this momentum. In January it launched a real estate investment fund aimed at redeveloping underutilized buildings in the area.

The $10 million fund will acquire property in the River District, which “has within it about 4 million square feet of underutilized space, much of it sitting in old warehouses,” says Karl Stauber, the foundation’s president and CEO.

The foundation is partnering with Danville-based Watershed Ventures, a real estate development and investment firm, to manage the fund.

The idea for the fund originated about four years ago when the foundation began looking at new opportunities for its $217 million endowment. It decided having its own real estate fund made sense.

The foundation previously had invested in a national distressed real estate fund focused on the large metro areas around the country. “We worked on the idea for four years. We looked at models around the country,” Stauber says. “We wanted to make sure it was legal and prudent from an investment standpoint.”

The foundation decided that Watershed would be able to provide the “vision, innovation and experience” needed to advance the revitalization project, Stauber says. As part of its responsibility, Watershed will identify and secure properties, plan for their development and attract developers.

“They will bring us a proposal about making an investment, and we will review it,” Stauber says. “Unless we disagree, the investment will be made. We look forward to seeing the ideas they bring to the table.”

About half of the $10 million fund during the next 10 years will be used in acquiring properties. “It will probably take Watershed about a year to do the property acquisition component,” Stauber says.

The remaining $5 million is allocated to short-term, high-interest-rate mezzanine loans (similar to a bridge loan) to developers who want to “come into the market to help move their projects forward,” Stauber says.

During the past nine months, Watershed has secured about 475,000 square feet of space in the River District, including the Belk Leggett Building and the Imperial Mill.

“By investing in local real estate we believe we can generate market-rate returns and help drive the redevelopment of the River District,” Stauber says.

Blacksburg-based Modea changes its course

Blacksburg-based Modea has a new look and a new focus. The company has shifted from being a digital advertising agency to a digital consultancy. It also spun out one of its divisions so it can focus on the expansion of its software tool for the wireless industry.

“We started transitioning away from being a full-service digital advertising agency about three years ago,” says CEO Ted Boezaart, who joined the company in July. “The advertising agency wasn’t the right fit for us. We were starting to run up against multi-conglomerate agencies. We looked at our core competency and asked ourselves: What do we do that is unique? We wanted to shift our focus to where we provide value.”

Moving forward, the company will focus on large transformational technology solutions for health-care and wireless providers. Its clients include Duke Medicine and Verizon Wireless.

“The health-care and wireless industries are a few years behind the technology curve from the client interaction perspective,” Boezaart says. “We really want to help solve user problems with technology. We will work with them to create more meaningful interactions with their customers.”

The company recently helped a large academic health-care organization create a technological solution that gives patients the ability to find the right doctor.

“There are thousands of doctors to choose from,” Boezaart says. “We built a tool where patients can go online and list their problems and preferences. They get a small list of doctors with short bios. We helped the health-care system restructure the way data is entered online.”

The company’s clients are located throughout the U.S. “We have a lot of interactions on the East Coast,” Boezaart says.

The former Modea division, which hasn’t been named yet, has been functioning independently for almost a year. It will be led by Modea co-founders Aaron Herrington and David Catalano. It is focusing on a product for the wireless telephone industry. “We provide tools that empower users to self troubleshoot online,” says Boezaart.

Sixty percent of Modea’s 96 employees work in the division. The remaining 40 percent work for the consultancy. Both are located in the same building in Kent Square.

Modea’s new logo with three triangles pays homage to its Blacksburg heritage as well as the assets of the region, such as a large technology university and community in addition to like-minded tech companies. “We wanted to communicate the fact that being here in the mountains of Virginia affords us a perspective, both physically and intellectually, that you can’t get anywhere else,” Boezaart says.

Competition increases for cybersecurity program

The demand for cybersecurity products is at an all-time high as alarming data breaches continue.

In June, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced that it had been the target of a cyberattack. At first, federal officials thought the breach affected the records of about 4 million federal employees. FBI Director James Comey later raised that number to 18 million, making it one of the largest breaches of government data in the nation’s history.

No one understands the need for heightened cybersecurity better than Pete Jobse, president and CEO of the Center for Innovative Technology, who also serves as executive chairman of the 2-year-old MACH37 Cyber Accelerator.

Since it began in 2013, the program has had 22 graduates who are now developing products in Virginia. Jobse expects to have six to seven companies participate in the fall session, which begins in September.

“Cyberattacks are a pervasive problem. Cybersecurity is an enormous growth area. It was very apparent to us after about 20 months of research that we had this huge density of cybersecurity expertise in Virginia, but it was untapped,” Jobse says of the idea for the accelerator, which helps information security entrepreneurs and startups ramp up their plans.

Entrepreneurs and startups must apply to MACH37, and acceptance has become increasingly competitive. In each 14-week session — there are two a year — five to eight companies are accepted. About 10 companies apply for each slot. “The number of applicants continues to increase,” Jobse says, noting that accepted companies each receive a $50,000 investment.

The accelerator accepts companies from the United States and foreign countries. “We have applicants from London, Turkey and North Africa,” Jobse says. “We are now recognized globally.”

All of the applicants are thoroughly vetted. If a company is less than stellar, “we move on,” Jobse says. “There are certainly areas we are leery of right now.”

The intensive program helps businesses evolve their ideas for cybersecurity products by “vetting it with corporations and organizations that would likely buy it and also vetting it with investors who would invest in it. In addition we link the companies to cybersecurity leaders who serve as mentors,” Jobse says.

The Commonwealth of Virginia underwrote the accelerator’s operations for the past two years, but going forward it will be supported by its platinum sponsors, a group of 14 companies that are national leaders in cybersecurity.

“The extent of cybercrime has reached the level that requires industry leaders to pursue all innovative channels to protect private and public assets,” Jobse says. “The platinum sponsor program bridges the innovation and creativity of the startup community with the market presence and growth objectives of industry leaders.”

Jobse says the accelerator was begun with the ambition of making it a destination for the next generation of cybersecurity product companies. “We believe Virginia can be the epicenter of cybersecurity creation,” he says.

Project aims to increase downtown businesses

Mary Miller, president and CEO of the Downtown Nor­­­­folk Council, wants the Granby Street area of downtown Norfolk to be a business showplace.

In May, the group partnered with the digital marketing firm Grow to begin Vibrant Spaces, a program designed to increase the number of street-level businesses in the area.

The targeted area is located near a cluster of popular attractions such as the Chrysler Hall, Chrysler Museum, Scope Arena and Nauticus. “We see a lot of visitor traffic in that area,” Miller says. “This would give visitors more things to do.”

The growth of Norfolk’s downtown residential population is one catalyst for the program. “That gives you the base and critical mass to support these new businesses,” Miller says.

The council came up with the project after receiving input from people who live, work and own businesses downtown. The area already has a growing number of independent restaurants. “We knew we had the opportunity for more retail,” Miller says.

The group’s wish list includes a grocery store or urban market, bakery, farmers market, brewery, bike shop, wine shop, homemade ice-cream parlor, 24-hour diner, live music venue and art-supply, pet-supply and home décor stores.

Phase I of the program will offer six available downtown spaces to new businesses. They will be able to lease spaces at 50 percent of market rate for two years and 75 percent of market rate for the third year. Business owners also will have access to $20,000 kick-start grants ($10,000 on opening and $10,000 at the one-year anniversary).

In another facet of the program, existing downtown businesses can apply for a share of $60,000 in matching grants to be used in making their businesses more attractive. The successful applicants will receive funds equal to up to 50 percent of the cost of their enhancement projects, or up to $10,000 per business.

Businesses will be notified by early August on whether they have been accepted as a program participant.

“This program is one-of-a-kind,” says Miller. “We’ve researched catalyst programs across the country and have not found anything like it.”

Interchange develops food-grade warehouses

Harrisonburg-based Interchange Group is acquiring a 13-acre site in the Hampton Roads area within 15 miles of the ports. The third-party logistics provider hopes to have a food-grade warehouse in operation by the end of next year. That timeframe would coincide with the completion of the Panama Canal expansion, a project that will double capacity of that trade route. 

The new facility “will give us the ability to consolidate operations in that area and provide better service for import and export,” says Terry Cunningham, Interchange’s sales manager.

The company currently has 14 facilities with a total of 1.6 million square feet of warehouse space in Waynesboro, Front Royal, Winchester and Harrisonburg/Rockingham County. Interchange also has a trucking operation, Interchange Express, in Suffolk that transports containers from Hampton Roads ports to locations in Virginia and the mid-Atlantic region.

Interchange’s business is divided equally between providing logistical services and leasing warehouse space. It has domestic and international customers. “We have one Canadian company that handles the repackaging of fruits and vegetables under the Welch’s brand,” Cunningham says, noting that Hershey’s is also a customer.

In addition to its warehouses, the company has two pad-ready sites available for development. Construction on a 126,000-square-foot building on a site across from the company’s existing facility in Front Royal should be completed by the end of summer 2016. Another site at an existing property in Lyndhurst is available for a 204,000-square-foot facility.

“We are staying ahead of the curve when it comes to having land available to build on,” Cunningham says. “We have most of the infrastructure ready to go, and it’s zoned appropriately. If a client comes to us and says they would like to have a building, we can typically get a building up in 10 to 12 months.”

Almost all the company’s buildings are food-grade facilities. Some are equipped for a combination of temperatures. “We adhere to protocols that allow them to store food-grade packaging materials, products and ingredients as well as nonfood-related products,” Cunningham says.

The temperature in the company’s frozen-food warehouse spaces, for example, can go as low as minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit, while its heated spaces, which store products such as coconut and chocolate paste, can be kept at more than 90 degrees.

In the last 10 years the need for temperature-controlled space has grown rapidly, Cunningham says. “We have a niche market in assisting those companies that need to have temperature-controlled space along the I-81 corridor,” he says. “In the last three years when we develop additional space, it has been geared toward temperature-controlled space.”

Seed fund attracts personalized therapy firm

Panacea BioMatx Inc. co-founders Edison Hudson and L. Staton Noel III might not have considered expanding their personalized therapy company to Danville if they hadn’t received a $250,000 seed-fund investment from The Launch Place.

In return for the investment, the company committed to creating at least five jobs paying an average of $50,000 annually within three years.

“Certainly the resources offered through The Launch Place were an important incentive,” says Panacea CEO Hudson. “We looked at the lab and production facilities [in Danville], and the cost compared very favorably to Research Triangle Park” in North Carolina where the company is based. Another plus is that Danville is only an hour’s drive away.

Eva Doss, president and CEO of The Launch Place, has been watching Panacea’s progress for more than a year. She finds it a good fit for the organization, which helps develop entrepreneurs by providing seed money and consulting services. “We try to invest in companies in green technologies, IT, medical device firms and manufacturing,” she says.

Founded in early 2013, Panacea develops and manufactures personalized therapies. It creates personalized dietary supplement formulations in a single easy-to-swallow pouch. “The whole idea behind personalization is that different people have different needs. We personalize to the individual,” says Hudson. “It allows people to take just what they need — the right thing in the right amount.”

The company employs a robotic system in its manufacturing. “We only have one of these now, and it can serve about 8,000 to 10,000 clients per month,” Hudson says. “As we increase our customer base, we will place additional compounding robots in other locations. At some point, we will want to have a formulations robot in Virginia.”

The company’s supplements include vitamins, micro-minerals such as zinc, iron and selenium along with herbals and beneficial oils such as Omega 3. “At some point in the future, we expect to add a limited range of pharmaceuticals,” Hudson says.

The start of the company’s Danville operations will depend on its production rate and how fast it outgrows its current production area. “We will get tight by the end of the year, and then we will be forced to look for more manufacturing space,” Hudson says.

“The potential in the size of their market is huge,” Doss says of Panacea. “They already employ 12 people in Research Triangle Park. They have a solid management team.”

Projects keep Branch Group workforce growing

The Branch Group’s diverse portfolio of projects, from major roadway expansions to institutional construction, keeps the Roanoke-based company on an upward trajectory. “We have seen significant growth in terms of volume pretty much across the board,” says CEO J. William Karbach. The company’s workforce is projected to reach nearly 1,000 this year, up 50 percent from 2010.

The Branch Group is the holding company for Branch Highways, Branch and Associates (construction managers and general contractors), E.V. Williams (prime contractors for highways) and G.J. Hopkins (mechanical and electrical contractors).

Current ongoing projects include the expansion of Route 58 in Carroll County and Dominion Boulevard in Chesapeake as well as the construction of the 155,000-square-foot Cregger athletic center at Roanoke College.

Most of the company’s projects are in Virginia, but Karbach would like to see the company expand its footprint in the Southeast. “We have been multistate in the past. In the 1990s we worked in Mississippi, Tennessee and Pennsylvania. During the downturn, most, if not all, of our projects were in Virginia,” he says. “Now we have a few endeavors in North Carolina.”

The core market for Branch and Associates is institutional construction, mainly the K-12 and higher-education market. Recent projects include construction of Blacksburg and Auburn high schools and Auburn Middle School in Montgomery County. Branch also built the Jerry Falwell Library at Liberty University in Lynchburg. “It’s an iconic showpiece,” Karbach says.

The company also has worked on multifamily housing, health-care, commercial and industrial projects. “They are all primarily in Virginia, but we have also worked in West Virginia and North Carolina,” he says.

The company has completed a number of projects in recent years for the Carilion New River Valley Medical Center in Christiansburg. “We are back there again working on renovations,” Karbach says.

The Branch Group is unusual in its industry because it is entirely owned by its employees. Whenever the company hires employees, it tries to make sure they “can embrace the culture, which is deeply rooted in employee ownership,” Karbach says.