Crain's Cleveland Business

VOL. 39, NO. 8

FEBRUARY 19 - 25, 2018

Source Lunch

Looming danger Old oil and gas wells are a sticky issue in region.

Page 3

The List

CLEVELAND BUSINESS

Northeast Ohio’s largest marketing firms Page 15

Courtney Gras, program director, Bounce Innovation Hub Page 19 REAL ESTATE

May Co. building to get cleanout

MARKETING AND CREATIVITY

Name that brew

By STAN BULLARD sbullard@crain.com @CrainRltywriter

The moniker and label are just two of the many things to consider when it comes to the marketing of a craft beer brand.

(The taste counts, too.) Focus, Page 10

Contributed photo

TRAVEL

CommutAir likes NEO landing spot

By JAY MILLER jmiller@crain.com @millerjh

It wasn’t until last Thursday, Feb. 15, that travelers could once again board an airplane operated by CommutAir at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, even though the regional air carrier moved its corporate headquarters to North Olmsted last year.

CommutAir had flown flights out of Cleveland for the former Continental Airlines, but Continental was merged

into United Airlines and its flights from Hopkins ended when United trimmed its operation there in 2014.

Actually, there was no reason passengers waiting to board United Express flight 4889, the 2:50 p.m. flight leaving Hopkins that day, would have known they were boarding a CommutAir plane. The airplane they boarded for the 80-minute nonstop flight to Dulles International Airport in Reston, Va., outside Washington, D.C., even had the words “United Express” on the fuselage.

“The only time you know you’re not

Entire contents © 2018 by Crain Communications Inc.

flying United is when we announce during our safety briefing, ‘Thank you for flying United Express operated by CommutAir,’ ” said Subodh Karnik, CommutAir’s president and CEO. “Everything we’re doing has to be almost seamless” with United.

Last September, the company announced it would move its corporate headquarters from Burlington, Vt., to North Olmsted and expand its administrative operations here. It said it would “consolidate offices, tap the local talent pool and benefit from the competitive costs facilitated by the

state and city’s incentive programs.”

That statement was referring to two financial incentives — one from the state of Ohio and the other from the city of North Olmsted — the company won.

The Ohio Tax Credit Authority awarded a nine-year, 1.9% Job Creation Tax Credit that could be worth $1.1 million to CommutAir if it adds $6.7 million in new annual payroll to its $5.5 million in existing payroll in North Olmsted. The city of North Olmsted offered the airline a similar tax credit.

SEE COMMUTAIR, PAGE 6

Dan Gilbert’s Bedrock LLC is in the throes of preparing plans for the former May Co. building on Public Square, but it’s going to stir up some dust — literally — inside the terra cotta landmark.

Ken Till, who recently became D etroit-bas ed Bedrock’s first director of development in Cleveland, said the company is preparing to seek bids for interior demolition of Till empty upper floors at the eight-story building.

“We’ll preserve all of the historically important features, but a lot of office improvements were made to the building over the years, including after May Co. moved out,” Till said in a Feb. 13 phone interview. “Nothing is cast in stone. We have some ideas how the second floor might serve a retail use and are looking at how to open (the building) up to add air and light in an atrium and preserve the significant features.”

The primary direction remains residential; the building can accommodate more than 200 apartments and retain existing first-floor retail space.

He acknowledged that Geis Cos., the Streetsboro design-build firm, is working with Bedrock on initial programming because it has experience with the building.

Geis did preparatory work for Landmark Management when it was in a partnership looking at converting the building’s upper floors to apartments.

SEE BUILDING, PAGE 6

Akron: Zeber-Martell Gallery is creating buzz with clay creations. Page 16

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

Home Savings has been on home-run streak

By JEREMY NOBILE jnobile@crain.com jeremynobile@gmail.com

There’s something special happening at Home Savings Bank.

The Youngstown-based bank subsidiary of United Community Financial Corp. (NASDAQ: UCFC) is seeing its efforts to transform the former S&L into a more profitable commercial bank pay off.

Last year for the bank — which changed its name from Home Savings and Loan Association of Youngstown to simply Home Savings Bank last January alongside the conversion of its charter — was its best year yet under Gary Small, who took over as president and CEO in April 2014.

The bank’s balance sheet is expanding, dividends are increasing, costs are flat, there’s plenty of capital on hand there to fund future acquisitions, and its overall growth and loan production is outpacing both its peers and the wider banking sector.

“While the market as a whole may not be growing as much, we are doing better than that because we are winning existing business from other banks,” Small said.

A lot of banks may declare that.

And all banks want to.

But Home Savings, with $2.6 billion in assets, is clearly doing something right. It’s increasingly claiming ground in Northeast Ohio, where it happens to be the eighth-largest bank in the region by deposit market share, according to Crain’s research. It’s the leader

Home Savings Bank has $2.6 billion in assets. (Contributed photo)

of all community banks in this market in that ranking. All institutions ahead of it are larger, super-regional banks.

“In our three-year planning horizon, we see (earnings per share) growing north of 12%,” Small said.

“And we’ll get there by continuing to do what we do well, and more of it.”

One of the most telling stats is the bank’s loan production, which has been a hallmark for Small in giving the bank a more commercial focus.

In 2017, commercial loans were up 16% without the portfolio from North Canton’s Premier Bank & Trust — which Home Savings acquired in a roughly $40 million deal that closed last January — added in. The total portfolio closed at $1 billion in 2017

for the year, which is four times more than the bank did over the same period four years ago, as it was preparing to move away from the thrift model.

Total commercial balances were up 32% on the year.

Matt Garrity, Home Savings executive vice president and head of commercial lending, told investors during its Q4 2017 earnings call in January that the outlook for growth in 2018 is between 12% and 15%.

Comparatively, total loan growth in the U.S. banking industry overall was trending at just about 3.5% in 2017, according to the most recent data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Growth for community banks as a group was closer to 7.3%.

Learn more at OEConnection.com/Beth

So Home Savings’ recent performance and future outlook is pacing well ahead of the competition. Some of the bank’s strategic hires since Small joined the bank seem to be drawing business that way.

“Those first couple years were a couple years of turnaround and setting the stage for growth,” said Scott Siefers, an analyst at New York investment bank Sandler O'Neill and Partners who covers UCFC. “They’ve done a very nice job. Going forward, what you’ll see is a pretty steady and strong growth trajectory over the next few years.”

That growth isn’t coming at a hit to credit quality, either, which remains very strong at the bank, analysts say.

“We’ve never really experienced times quite this good relative to credit,” Small said. “As bad as it was in 2008 and 2009, it’s that good now.”

Small added he’d rather “do business with the best and make a nickel less.”

Among other benefits, the Premier acquisition added new depth in the bank’s wealth management and trust services as that institution functioned more as a boutique private bank. Home Savings will spread those services across its footprint, bringing those to the Mahoning Valley and Cleveland, Small said, “which will have a multiplier effect,” for the bank. The bank’s current footprint is predominantly clustered in Northeast Ohio, with offices in 14 counties in this market.

As far as an acquisition, he added, “If we can find a business partner along the way, we might strike a deal with, that’s just icing on the cake.”

With the Premier deal seemingly go-

ing smoothly, and considering the path Home Savings is on, the market definitely sees the firm as a likely acquirer going forward. Besides success in the balance sheet, that transaction both signals potential interest in other combinations going forward and shows the market they can do a deal properly.

“I certainly think they would be interested in doing deals,” Siefers said.

“They will be sensitive to pricing and tangible book earnback. The way I look at it, they’ve done a very nice job on the organic side. So we know they’re capable of doing that on their own. That (Premier) transaction was important for investors to get comfortable with what they can do on the M&A side. And by all accounts, things have worked out there as well.”

Things weren’t always this stellar for the bank.

Like many financial institutions, Home Savings weathered its share of struggles in the last recession when it was still a thrift and carried a lending portfolio heavy in residential real estate — and investors weren’t happy about it.

The bank’s stock, which hit a peak a bit ahead of the downturn at $12.72, lost 96% of its value upon plunging to 51 cents in 2009. Today, the stock is trading around $9.50.

For Home Savings, the past few years have been a turnaround tale.

The turnaround has worked. And the bank is poised to drive ahead.

“We are growing, but very responsibly, and I think we can keep doing that,” Small said. “I expect 2018 to be even better than 2017.”

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PA G E 3

Old wells are ‘a problem for everyone’

By DAN SHINGLER dshingler@crain.com @DanShingler

When it comes to oil and gas wells in Northeast Ohio, environmentalists and the drilling industry are on the same page: They want a lot of them to be plugged.

That’s not because the Ohio Oil and Gas Association (OOGA) has taken up with the Ohio Environmental Council (OEC) to oppose drilling.

They are in bed together, but it’s not necessarily love. It’s because they both say there’s a longstanding problem of old, abandoned wells leaking methane, oil and otherwise contaminating the ground and presenting a danger to residents.

They have different reasons for wanting them to be addressed, but are both pushing for it. They helped get legislation to address the issue passed in the Ohio House in January (HB 225), and are now hopeful the Senate will follow suit.

“It’s a problem for everyone,” said Melanie Houston, director of climate programs at OEC. She wants the wells addressed for reasons other than climate, though many of them do release methane, a greenhouse gas that is far more powerful than carbon dioxide in terms of its ability to trap heat and contribute to global warming. They also can contaminate ground water, sometimes contain old drilling fluids or oil, and are made of metals that should be removed, not to mention they can be a safety issue.

“These have been found under buildings, houses, streets,” Houston said. “There’s a story about a school gymnasium in Lorain where there was a methane leak and they couldn’t

Long before the advent of horizontal fracking, traditional oil and gas wells dotted the landscape of Northeast Ohio. (Dan Shingler)

figure out where it was. It turned out to be an old well.”

There are so far more than 700 socalled orphan oil and gas wells with no known owners identified around the state that need to be plugged, according to information from OOGA. Surprisingly, perhaps to some at least, Northeast Ohio has a disproportionate number of the old wells, with the Cleveland area leading the way.

The average number of orphan wells for Ohio’s 88 counties is 8.2. Cuyahoga County has 54; only Washington and Wood counties have more, with 55 and 79, respectively. Also ranking high are Lorain County with 41 wells that need to be addressed, Medina with 33 and

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Lake County with 16.

So how did these counties end up with so many abandoned wells, when the drilling hot spots in Ohio are in the state’s southeast corner?

Largely because of John D. Rockefeller, the famous Cleveland oil tycoon.

“At one point, Ohio was the largest crude oil producer in the world,” said OOGA spokesman Mike Chadsey.

When Rockefeller was refining his oil in Cleveland, the surrounding area was one of the first places that got drilled heavily to keep him supplied.

The local virgin reservoirs had enough oil to supply a nation — or at least it did in the late-1800s, when demand was still small by today’s standards.

Chadsey also said that in the 1960s, the state began regulating drilling and required that operators properly track and shut down their wells. So, counties that saw drilling or wells that were operating later than that don’t have many orphan wells, Chadsey said.

OOGA is pushing for the legislation currently making its way through the statehouse because it would require the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to spend 45% of the severance taxes that drillers pay on the oil and gas they extract in Ohio to plug the old wells. The rest would have to be used for other regulatory purposes, said Chadsey, who added that OOGA wants to prevent the state from using the money to plug budget holes or to be used for other purposes — as the group claims the state has done with $62 million in severance tax funds in recent years.

But OOGA has another reason for wanting this to happen.

“We’ve always supported the plugging of orphan wells. One, it’s the environmental thing, and two, there are a lot of legacy guys who don’t have a lot to do right now,” Chadsey said.

By “legacy guys,” Chadsey means a good portion of OOGA’s approximately 2,000 members who are traditional vertical drillers — the ones that tapped shallow deposits of natural gas before horizontal fracking of the state’s deep shale deposits came along.

The shale boom has been a double-edged sword for the members of this group. Some of them own mineral rights, so they’ve been able to cash in alongside farmers and other landowners. But as a group, they generally have neither the know-how or the equipment to drill the big shale wells, some of which now run three miles horizontally a mile or two beneath the surface.

At the same time, all of the shale

gas coming to market has meant that it’s no longer economical to produce small amounts of natural gas with vertical drilling.

Those same drillers are the best equipped people to plug the wells drilled by their predecessors, according to Chadsey.

“They have the equipment, the knowledge and geology background.

They can get these things plugged quickly and effectively,” he said.

Another group that might win is landowners, who generally want to get rid of the old abandoned wells, but sometimes might have trouble coming up with the $25,000 to $75,000 it costs to plug them properly.

Houston said other provisions of the bill that passed the Ohio House last month would speed up the process for getting approval to plug the wells and would also allow ODNR to pay for the costs of plugging some old wells, such as those where the original owner or driller can’t be determined or located.

“It makes things a little easier for landowners as well, just by speeding up the process. And instead of having to get reimbursed … this bill would allow the chief (of ODNR) to pay that contract directly on behalf of the landowner,” Houston said.

OOGA and OEC say they hope to see action soon.

“It just got referred to Senate Energy and Natural Resources (on Feb. 13), and we expect hearings soon,” Chadsey said.

If that happens, it could create a new mini-industry for the state’s legacy drillers. There have been more than 265,000 oil and gas wells drilled in Ohio over the last 150 years or so, and there are likely far more than 700 that need to be found and properly plugged, Chadsey said.

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Growth Opportunity makes room for more at Link59

By STAN BULLARD sbullard@crain.com @CrainRltywriter

Growth Opportunity Partners needed room to grow as it exits the startup phase at JumpStart Inc. of Cleveland and found it at Link59, Hemingway Development Co.’s new office building at 6100 Euclid Ave. The nonprofit is focused on lending to and coaching businesses that are located in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.

Michael Jeans, Growth Opportunity president, said it landed at the building because it’s near the poor East Side neighborhoods where it hopes to spawn job growth through helping businesses expand, and because it offered something rare at competing downtown properties the group had considered.

“Free parking is important to us. We didn’t want the impediment of clients having to pay parking,” Jeans said in a Feb. 13 interview at the building. The new MidTown building also is centrally located for people coming from the east or west, he added.

Growth Opportunity just signed an eight-year lease for 5,600 square feet adjoining Link59’s entrance lobby,

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which faces Chester Avenue and its parking lot, although the building has extensive Euclid frontage.

The new office will be grandiose compared to the less than 700 square feet that Jeans and three staffers (soon to be four) occupy in two suites at JumpStart, 6701 Carnegie Ave. However, Jeans said the office that

SEE GROWTH, PAGE 5

Local partnership’s work is credited for healthy savings

By LYDIA COUTRÉ

Talk to CBS and your local credit union about your next commercial loan.

Michael Jeans, president of Growth Opportunity Partners, has leased office space for the nonprofit at Link59. (Stan Bullard)

Growth Opportunity plans to occupy in early April will serve as more than office space. It will be designed with multiple conference rooms to allow him and his staff to meet with owners of businesses located in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.

The space will even be designed in an open-office format so most of it may serve a second purpose as a large meeting room accommodating as many as 170 people. It’s such an important secondary use that the space will contain an overhead projection system to aid meeting presentations.

The meeting aspect is important because Growth Opportunity plans to hold a sequence of educational business planning and information sessions on a regular basis that would allow business owners to feel “it has a cadence so they can catch the next one if they miss one,” Jeans said.

The office will have five private suites — the staff does serve a role similar to a lender, even though its website emphasizes it is not a lender of last resort.

However, its strategy is to couple lending with business coaching assistance, although it will write some loans itself, Jeans said.

lcoutre@crain.com @LydiaCoutre

A new Health Affairs study links nearly $40 million in savings over six years to the work of Better Health Partnership, a Cleveland-based regional health care improvement collaboration of primary care providers and other stakeholders.

The savings come from avoided hospitalizations by providing better care to primary care patients with diabetes, high blood pressure and heart failure, according to the study published in the February issue of Health Affairs and conducted by researchers at the Case Western Reserve University-MetroHealth System Center for Health Care Research and Policy.

“You take good care of them in the outpatient setting, and it’s (a) much lower likelihood that they would need hospitalization for, for example, amputation in diabetes or kidney failure or recurrence of heart failure,” said Dr. Randall Cebul, an emeritus professor of medicine and of population and quantitative health sciences in CWRU School of Medicine.

Cebul — an author on the study and founder and original CEO of the partnership that was formerly called Better Health Greater Cleveland — said the results were more dramatic than had been expected.

Better Health Partnership’s membership includes general internists, family physicians, geriatricians, medicine-pediatrics specialists and advanced practice nurses. The partnership assesses members’ performance across nationally endorsed quality measures, and also collects data on patients’ social determinants of health, according to the study.

In an effort to disseminate observed best practices, Better Health

uses these data for three types of quality improvement: twice-yearly public reports that enable members to compare their quality measures to others in the region; twice-yearly learning collaborative summits to share best practices; guidance for practice coaches in their support of quality improvement. Coaching focuses on workflow redesign, the meaningful use of electronic health records and recognition as patient-centered medical homes, according to the study.

The study compares Cuyahoga County to other large, urban Ohio counties: Hamilton, Franklin, Lucas, Montgomery and Summit counties.

If trends in Cuyahoga had followed those in the comparative counties, it would have seen an estimated 5,746 more hospitalizations for ambulatory-care sensitive conditions between 2009 and 2014.

The study — funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of National Institutes of Health — looks at hospitalizations that could have been prevented or avoided with quality primary care for patients with diabetes, high blood pressure, heart failure and pneumonia vaccinations.

It compares hospitalization rates for these conditions in Cuyahoga County and the comparative county before (2003-2008) and after (2009-2014) Better Health programs and activities were established.

Although Better Health Partnership was formally founded in 2007, the study uses Jan. 1, 2009 as the starting point for when its work would have taken effect.

Hospitalization rates before that time, between 2003 and 2008 had been declining already for both Cuyahoga County and the comparative counties, said Joseph Tanenbaum, lead author on the study and a M.D./Ph.D. student in the Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences in the

Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.

The researchers projected what hospitalizations would have looked like between 2009 and 2014 had the rates followed the declining trend.

“What we found is that (in) Cuyahoga County the hospitalization rates fell more and more quickly in Cuyahoga County relative to the comparative counties after the implementation of Better Health,” Tanenbaum said.

The biggest savings that accompanied the averted hospitalizations was for congestive heart failure, saving an estimated $20.2 million over six years. Estimated savings for diabetes-related conditions were $9.2 million; for high blood pressure, $4.4 million; and $8.7 million for pneumonia by increasing vaccination rates. These numbers add up to more than $40 million because they are estimates calculated separately.

“For 11 years, Better Health has routinely documented that collaboration amid competition is possible and productive,” Rita Horwitz, president and CEO of Better Health, said in a prepared statement. “Common chronic diseases disproportionately affect disadvantaged populations and consume resources that otherwise might support investments in education, housing, public health and other community needs.”

The study, she said, highlights the power of the Better Health Partnership to make a difference in population health and health care quality and costs in the region.

Tanenbaum agreed: “At sort of the 30,000-foot view of this, our results support the idea that provider-led primary care focused collaboratives can improve population health in a meaningful way and have the potential to lead to some cost savings for the broader health care system.”

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PA G E 5

Firm gets its message across

GROWTH

By RACHEL ABBEY McCAFFERTY

The nonprofit’s focus is on small businesses that are ready to grow, but for a variety of reasons are unable to secure loans from traditional lenders.

They need to be able to meet underwriting standards, but also create “meaningful-wage jobs,” Jeans said, that also serve a community development role by being located in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.

Often Growth Opportunity’s programs and coaching sessions are designed to link large established business owners and operators with minority-owned businesses.

“The idea is to recognize that we all seek opportunities that are data-driven and share the same challenges,” Jeans said.

Counting jobs is important to the nonprofit, which has aided companies that have created 350 jobs since making its first loan in 2015. Now it has made $3 million in direct loans over the last two years. Its average loan size is $250,000 to $300,000, Jeans said.

Support from the Cleveland and Gund foundations, JP Morgan Chase, the federal government and others have helped it put together its loan pool.

Nathan Wynveen, director of portfolio management for Hemingway, said the development firm is glad to land a “community bank that is involved in the community” to the nearly complete three-story building.

Wynveen said Growth Opportunity qualified as a special services firm for the structure’s tech focus.

McPC Inc., a Cleveland-based information technology firm, earlier leased space on the building’s second story for its headquarters.

Jeff Epstein, executive director of the MidTown Inc. local development corporation, said he’s glad that Growth Opportunity found room to grow in MidTown.

“One of our goals is to remain an inclusive neighborhood,” Epstein said, and the nonprofit remaining there will advance that cause.

Link59 is an eye-catching part of an 11-acre development on Cleveland’s Health-Tech Corridor, which also incorporates a building for the University Hospitals clinic for women and a new home for Dave’s Supermarket on its Chester Avenue side.

All told, the project by Hemingway principals Fred Geis and James Doyle will incorporate 250,000 square feet of space when it is fully developed.

“This was once part of Millionaires Row, where Cleveland’s wealthy had mansions,” Wynveen said. “It fell on hard times, and now it’s coming back.”

For his part, Jeans said, “Between UH, Dave’s and others, this place is getting the building blocks to form a community of its own.”

rmccafferty@crain.com @ramccafferty

The mail is changing, becoming more personalized and more connected to technology.

And Midwest Direct, a Cleveland-based mail and digital communications company, has changed along with it, investing big in order to keep growing.

Midwest Direct was started in 1982 by brothers Richard T. Gebbie and Jim Gebbie, who picked up mail in the back of a car. Today, the family-owned company has about 220 employees in two locations in Cleveland and Pittsburgh, though that can fluctuate, and annual revenue is around $20 million.

Midwest Direct can manage the entire print and mail cycle for customers, from concept to delivery, as well as manage and coordinate customers’ email and online advertising campaigns.

“What we’ve really developed into is a communication delivery company,” CEO Richard Gebbie said.

Even in the digital age, the company still sees plenty of value to physical mail. For one, it’s tangible, said president Sean M. Gebbie. And it’s more personalized today, said national sales manager Mandy E. Clayton. Messages can be tied to purchases or even to items waiting to be bought in an online cart.

Sean Gebbie and Mandy Clayton are the children of Jim Gebbie, who now serves as the company’s chairman. In January, as part of a succession plan, Sean Gebbie moved up from a vice president role to president, Richard Gebbie moved from president to CEO, and Jim Gebbie shed the CEO portion of his role.

“A family business can be difficult, but my brother and I set the tone early that we work for the company and the company doesn’t work for us,” Richard Gebbie said.

In the past two years, the company has seen sales revenue grow by about 30%

each year, Richard Gebbie said, a fact he attributes to the company’s hard work and reputation, but also to factors in the mail industry. Prices are increasing, he said, and the aggregated mailing the company does can Richard Gebbie help customers save money. On the billing side, Midwest Direct’s customers range from banks to hospitals to insurance companies.

When it comes to marketing, nonprofits are the biggest group, followed by retail.

When Medical MuSean Gebbie tual, an Ohio-based health insurer, decided to shut down its internal pre-sort mail operation and outsource the work, it chose Midwest Direct, said Tim Lewandowski, manager of electronic publishing and distribution services. Medical Mutual had used Midwest Direct as a back-up for years.

Lewandowski said with Midwest Direct’s reputation, Medical Mutual knew its mail would be safe, and the change meant a cost savings for the insurer.

Another customer, Maple Heightsbased Post-Up Stand, has been working with Midwest Direct for about five years, said Dennis Lieberman, marketing director. Midwest Direct prints and mails catalogs for the trade show and marketing display company. Post-Up Stand wanted a company that wasn’t so big it would get lost there, but one that wasn’t too small to handle its growth. Midwest Direct satisfied both, Lieberman said.

“We think they’re great,” he said.

In those two years of sales growth, Midwest Direct has also been busy investing. It acquired the data division of C.Trac for an undisclosed amount, pur-

chased a nearby building for future expansion and invested heavily in new equipment. In total, Midwest Direct has invested about $4 million in equipment purchases and building improvements in Cleveland and Pittsburgh in the last two years, not including the purchase of the new building, Michelle Toivonen, director of strategic marketing, said in an email. Those investments include new mail-sorting and envelope-packing equipment to increase its volume.

And its latest investment, a new Canon printer, will expand its printing capabilities and allow it to print products with a high level of personalization. Its existing machinery can add personal information in black ink on a pre-printed roll. The new machine will be able to print a completely personalized sheet in full color directly from a blank roll of paper, Richard Gebbie said.

The printer also will allow Midwest Direct to print on demand, Sean Gebbie said.

That means that instead of ordering large volumes, customers will be able to make instant changes. Aside from the personalization possibilities, that could be attractive to customers that need to print regulations in their documents, like the mortgage industry. Before, those were pre-printed, which meant a lot of wasted paper — and money — if a regulation changed.

Richard Gebbie expected the machine, which cost about $800,000, to be completely up and running by the end of February.

But its investments in print don’t mean the company is ignoring the rise of email. About two years ago, the company started expanding into those electronic components of its business. Toivonen said Midwest Direct has found that when it takes an “omnichannel marketing” approach, it gets better results. For example, a company could coordinate its messages so that when an individual receives a piece of physical mail, he or she would then also start receiving related emails and targeted online ads, Toivonen said.

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COMMUTAIR CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

As a regional airline, CommutAir doesn’t market air travel or operate a reservation system. All it does is fly passengers and maintain smallish airplanes that mostly seat 50 passengers or fewer. It lets its partner, Chicago-based United Airlines, compete for passengers and manage their travel.

CommutAir’s flights generally cover 500 miles or less and bring passengers to United’s major hubs at Dulles and Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark, N.J. It handles 900 flights a week for United, flying from 34 airports. The number of flights is expected to grow as United, which has a 40% ownership interest in CommutAir, helps with the expansion.

The majority owner is Champlain Enterprises LLC, a privately held firm that has operated as a regional airline since 1989.

CommutAir came to the Cleveland area in 2007, bringing its operations center to North Olmsted when it began to operate flights as Continental Express, the identity Continental used for its regional carriers. When Continental’s busy hub operations ceased at Hopkins after its merger with United, CommutAir kept its operations center here, even though it no longer flew from Hopkins.

The North Olmsted office grew to 138 CommutAir employees before the headquarters move, operating the airline’s flight and system nerve centers, as well as its maintenance planning, crew scheduling, human resources and finance operations.

That number now has grown to 165, and the company has pledged to the tax credit authority that it will grow to 217 employees by the end of 2020. The company has 18,000 square feet of office space at Great Northern Corporate Center and is exploring additional space in its current location.

Overall, the company employs 900, many at a maintenance and training base in Albany, N.Y. What will fuel that growth is CommutAir’s switch to a more sophisticated airplane and a plan to grow that fleet.

“In three years from now, we’ll be triple in size, and I’m assuming that trajectory will continue,” Karnik said.

What had been a fleet of 23 turboprops a few years ago has been converted to a similar number of Embraer ERJ145 jet aircraft. The plan, Karnik said, is to grow to 61 Embraer jets over the next three years. The company has a commitment from United to sublease those airplanes, he said.

CommutAir is one of nine regional airlines with relationships to United. Although their roles are expanding, the regionals fly routes between smaller cities that couldn’t fill larger aircraft to the busy hubs of the major airlines.

In a brief statement, a United Airlines spokesman said, “CommutAir is a valued partner and we look forward to continuing to work together to ensure we provide a great travel experience for our customers throughout our network.”

The mainline airlines, including American and Delta airlines, delegate those routes to regional carriers largely because of cost. The flight crews of major airlines are unionized, so they command a pay level that would make flying smaller planes with fewer passengers unprofitable.

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However, Bedrock wound up buying the building from Euclid of Cleveland LLC, an affiliate of Miami-based real estate investor Robert Danial.

Undertaking “interior demolition” at May is no small task.

Part of the space includes a dated data center, from when KeyCorp’s computer unit occupied four floors in the building. There also are several floors containing a sea of office cubicles and enclosed private office suites.

Although Bedrock may be closer to undertaking a project at May Co., Till said his main priority will be to put together a plan for The Avenue shops, the retail portion of Tower City Center.

The shops have languished and vacancy has grown at the property since Bedrock bought it in 2016 from Forest City Realty Trust. The multilevel retail center was installed by Forest City in a 1990 remake of the city’s former central train station.

“Really, Tower City is the hub for everything else we have going on in Cleveland,” Till said. “It’s vital to us that the heart of the assets we own is reimagined to be all it can be.”

He said he will scope out community needs for the space, which has

CommutAir handles 900 flights a week for United Airlines. Its jets have “United Express” on the fuselage. (Contributed photo)

Pilots and first officers on regional airlines are not unionized and earn considerably less. Working on a regional airline, though, is seen by pilots as a stepping stone to a job with a major airline. However, a recent shortage of flight crews is raising pay levels. CommutAir is offering a $22,100 sign-on bonus to attract new crew as it expands.

The major airlines increasingly rely on the regionals. In 2016, regional air carriers accounted for 51% of the departures from Hopkins, according to data compiled by the Regional Airline Association, though that represents only 28% of the passengers, because of their smaller airplanes.

Southwest Airlines, a major carrier at Cleveland Hopkins, has a different strategy and relies only on larger aircraft. The same is true of other low-cost carriers, which tend to fly high-volume routes.

William Swelbar, a longtime industry observer who is a research engineer at the International Center for Air Transportation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, believes Karnik’s, and United’s, strategy is sound.

“Of the three network carriers, United has made clear its intentions to grow its network by connecting more smaller markets to their existing hub structure,” he wrote in an email. “So there could not be a better partner (for CommutAir) in the immediate term.”

Swelbar wrote that while the United strategy is not embraced by Wall Street, he contended that smaller markets, where there is less competition among air carriers, generate a disproportionate share of revenue. So he views the growth of a captive regional like CommutAir “as a revenue positive story for the airline badly in need of a revenue story.”

While in the past he viewed CommutAir as “a marginal operator,” his opinion is changing.

“At the time, the airline was operating primarily turboprop aircraft with poor reliability,” Swelbar wrote. “As they transition to a primarily jet operation, I expect their operational metrics to improve. Moreover, I am sure that is being demanded of them by United as well.”

Robert Mann, president of R.W. Mann & Co., Port Washington, N.Y., an airline industry consultant, concurs with Swelbar’s assessment of the United-CommutAir strategy.

“The replacement of turboprops with jets is a ‘save the franchise from oblivion’ move, so Subodh (Karnik) would undoubtedly be pleased,” Mann wrote in an email. “Same transition is occurring for American wholly-owned Piedmont.”

remained 100% retail, although that industry has changed dramatically.

Till, 53, said he joined Bedrock because he wanted a new challenge at this point in his career after serving as senior vice president of Southland, Mich.-based Redico, a national real estate company.

Till said he was acquainted with James Ketai, Bedrock’s CEO and co-founder, as a fellow member of the Detroit real estate community, and approached him directly about the Northeast Ohio job.

“In Detroit, I was exposed to all the great things they are doing. The opportunity Bedrock presented (in Cleveland) is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Till said.

Till was described by Crain’s Detroit Business as the “public face” on several high-profile Redico projects in the Detroit area, including a shopping center incorporating the first Meijer Inc. store in the city of Detroit.

“Nobody in the country is doing the sort of transformative projects that they are,” Till told Crain’s Detroit.

“I treasured the time I had at Redico, and I was involved in some transformative projects there, but I want to engage in a city again.”

Till said he will get support from Bedrock’s architecture and construction teams but will have a couple de-

velopment positions to fill. He said he does not yet have his arms around what types of jobs those will be. His scope in Cleveland does not include property management.

Till said he is meeting with everyone “who has a history” in Cleveland to learn how the city has evolved over time.

“I’m going to be completely engaged in Cleveland,” said Till, who has rented a two-bedroom apartment in the Flats and is putting his home in Michigan up for sale.

Till brings a fresh look to Cleveland from a long career with several firms in different cities, including working in Chicago for Hines Interests, a Texas-based real estate developer, before joining Redico in Michigan. He also worked for Irvine Co., a construction and development firm in Newport Beach, Calif., that dates from the 1860s.

Till also acknowledged Bedrock has land for redevelopment on the south side of Huron Road near Tower City, as well as the need for “reimagining” Tower City’s Avenue shops.

“We want to be cognizant of how we can engage that to other developments,” Till said. “We want to ensure everything is tied together in terms of a totality. I’m very excited about being here.”

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PA G E 7

At the Table

‘Chef-driven steakhouse’ will take over Gamekeeper’s spot Things have been hush-hush surrounding the fate of one of Northeast Ohio’s most popular inns: the storied Gamekeeper’s Taverne in Chagrin Falls.

But Joe Saccone, principal at the Beachwood-based Hyde Park Prime Steakhouse restaurant group, gave me an update on plans for the property at 87 West St. Joe “It will be a Crea chef-driven steakhouse, but it won’t be a typical American steakhouse and not another Hyde Park, or for that matter not another Fleming’s or Red,” Saccone said.

He emphasized “European-influenced.” The entrepreneur, who now operates properties in five states, envisions a spot that ties diners back to the 1940s and 1950s — even to the ’20s and ’30s — with recipes that feature beef.

“There’ll probably be some French recipes, Italian recipes, using sliced tenderloin and the like. But you’ll still be able to get your straight-up strip steaks and fillets,” says Saccone.

When they enter, patrons won’t recognize the space, he added.

“We’re pretty much blowing out the interior. The mezzanine and platform are all opened up, with all new furnishings and a whole new kitchen. It’s quite a transformation,” Saccone said.

But we’ll all have to wait for the new name. Saccone explains that contenders are under review to avoid similarly named properties elsewhere. Anticipate a late June or early July opening, he said.

At Grove Hill Whether you’re waiting for clear skies or you’re ready right now to break out of cabin fever, here’s another reason to wander the streets of Chagrin Falls. Grove Hill restaurant has finally opened for lunch.

It took chef-owner Tim Bando nearly four years to make the move.

Why so long, I asked? “ ’Cause I don’t want to work all day!” he said, bursting into laughter.

It also mattered that three other popular local restaurants already were offering lunch service, Bando added.

“When we first opened, we didn’t even consider it. And Yours Truly, Rick’s Cafe and Gamekeeper’s all did lunch. But now they’re … gone.”

(And soon to be replaced, it should be noted. You’ve already read Hyde Park Group’s plans for the former Gamekeeper’s complex. Flip Side and One Red Door owner Shawn Monday acquired the Rick’s property and is expected to reopen the space this summer. Meanwhile, Yours Truly, with its breakfasts, burgers and family style fare, is going strong.)

So expanding to an all-day menu made good business sense, Bando said. He’ll focus on more moderately priced casual cuisine, punctuated by a few daily specials. Price points typically will stand at about $22 or less, with specials in the $28 to $32 range.

Smoked baby back ribs, crispy Arancini (stuffed rice balls) and chicken pot pie will stay. The remainder of the new menu is taking shape.

Meanwhile, Bando will weave

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Arnaud Berthelier, executive chef of the Union Club in downtown Cleveland, has achieved the designation of certified master chef.

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some of his more plush menu staples into the list of specials, he explained.

“We’ll do a new perch fry, for instance, and probably move the trout, which is very popular, to our list of specials. At dinner, our pork chops — which are brined and weigh in at almost a pound — will go on the specials list. We have to charge $27 because it’s a (big) chop served with braised apples with sauerkraut, spaetzles and a cider reduction.

“We may include a braised lamb shank. And other fish specials will be seasonal, depending upon what the fishmongers have available — striped bass, cod.”

He continued, “What I guess I’m saying is that I’m trying to keep this place unpretentious. I want to run a place where people say, ‘Let’s just go for supper.’ It doesn’t have to be all fancy; just really good.”

Hyde Park expanding Speaking of the Hyde Park restaurants, the group is announcing the opening of a second Hyde Park Prime Steakhouse in the metro Detroit area.

A 7,000-square-foot, 200-seat restaurant is planned for the Northville Village Center in Northville Township. Hyde Park opened a steakhouse in Birmingham, Mich., in 2012.

The expansion marks the 13th Hyde Park restaurant in five states, as well as other properties: ML Tavern and Jekyll’s Kitchen in Northeast Ohio, and the Stack City Burger Bar and Black Point Steakhouse and Seafood Restaurant in Columbus.

A new master Certain ranks of professional chefs count professional certification as a hallmark of accomplishment.

Arnaud Berthelier, executive chef of the Union Club in downtown Cleveland, has achieved the designation of certified master chef.

Administered by the American Culinary Federation based in St. Augustine, Fla., the CMC designation is the 17,500-plus member organization’s highest recognition. To achieve that status, chefs must master the rigors of an eight-day series of practical and professional tests, including examinations that prove their business acumen. Of the 11 chefs that faced the challenge, Berthelier was among four who earned the recognition and is one of only 69 CMC chefs currently working in the U.S. The French-born Berthelier’s illustrious career has included years working at the famed Le Louis XV in Monte Carlo, where he worked under acclaimed chef Alain Ducasse.

In a media statement, the Club points out that it is “the only club in the world with two Master Chefs on staff,” with general manager and chief operating officer Lawrence McFadden holding the same CMC title.

A couple more notes J Sad to pass along news that Cleveland Pickle, the long-popular sandwich shop at 850 Euclid Ave. in downtown Cleveland, has closed.

Scene reported this week that the shop shuttered at the end of January and that owner Josh Kabat and his wife, Kiaran, will focus on the couple’s line of pickles: Preggo Pickles, with seasonings geared to soothe the symptoms of pregnant women.

J Looking for another harbinger of spring? Honey Hut Ice Cream, at 922 Pearl Road in Brunswick, plans to reopen on the Ides of March: Thursday, March 15.

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

Opinion Another Viewpoint

Pittsburgh gives Rust Belt a path it can replicate

By NOAH SMITH Bloomberg View

Editorial

Wilson’s wonder Matthew Wilson’s staff likes to joke that they get nervous when he gets on airplanes.

That’s because the University of Akron president tends to come up with some of his craziest ideas as he’s unplugged and soaring through the clouds.

It’s an admirable attribute for Wilson, the former law school dean who took over as the university’s 17th president in 2016 under less-than-ideal circumstances following the brief and tumultuous tenure of his predecessor.

Wilson’s latest idea is what’s ultimately been coined “FiveStar Fridays,” which basically means the university is doing away with, for the most part, Friday classes.

The goal will be to schedule classes Monday through Thursday and keep Fridays open for activities such as faculty office hours, hands-on learning opportunities, internships and career fairs. Wilson told Crain’s it’s not a cost-cutting opportunity.

College is about more than what happens in the classroom or even on campus, and Wilson seems to understand that. We hope the business community, particularly organizations in Summit County, responds and creates some opportunities for these students to get involved on Fridays.

It might seem like a small change, but it’s symbolic of the sort of entrepreneurial thinking needed in higher education, especially as the industry continues to struggle to prove its relevance as the cost of a degree continues to soar and students take on unmanageable amounts of debt.

After years of treading water and some hiccups — Ohio’s Polytechnic University, anyone? — things appear to be stabilizing at the University of Akron.

Fundraising has rebounded during the first half of the university’s fiscal year. The school brought in $16.2 million in gifts, gifts-in-kind and pledges, a 57% increase over the same time period last year.

Also, thanks to prudent fiscal management, the university only plans to draw $20 million — instead of $29 million — from its reserves to plug a budget hole. Because of the steps the uni-

versity has taken to manage its finances, the university’s fiscal health score assigned by the state continues to inch upward.

For fiscal 2017, the university climbed to 3.4 (on a 5-point scale). In 2015, that figure was 2.8.

It’s worth noting — and, we must say, a bit disappointing — Wilson could be setting his sights elsewhere. Last week, the University of Central Florida announced he was a semifinalist for its presidency. He, after all, has brought needed stability to Akron.

Still, the environment remains a challenge for the University of Akron — and higher education in general — but we like where the Zips are headed, even if inspiration is found in the clouds.

As for Oberlin ...

About 60 miles northeast of the University of Akron, another venerable — but vastly different — institution is grappling with the changing tides of higher education.

The issues facing Oberlin College — shrinking enrollment, budget woes — are not unique to the institution but have helped color the narrative around liberal arts institutions.

While virtually all higher education institutions have been criticized for their cost structures, liberal arts institutions like Oberlin have borne the bulk of that scrutiny given their higher price tags. Oberlin’s annual sticker price for tuition, fees and housing for first-year students hovers near $70,000.

Oberlin’s new president, Carmen Twillie Ambar, told Crain’s recently that one challenge is clearly communicating how classes and other experiences at Oberlin will directly connect to their lives after graduation. She also said the university is considering a rigorous academic review to ensure it boasts marketable offerings.

While, like Akron, the jury is still out over whether these moves are the right ones, it’s good to know that educational institutions know the status quo can’t remain.

Publisher and Editor: Elizabeth McIntyre (emcintyre@crain.com)

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I vividly remember a time back in 2007 when some people I knew were marveling at an online ad for a house in Pittsburgh selling for $1. Of course, the true cost of houses being auctioned for almost nothing is much higher, since you have to rebuild and maintain them. But it just served to illustrate Pittsburgh’s battered reputation as a post-industrial sob story, a tumbledown slum where no one would want to live.

A decade later, how things have changed. Pittsburgh is hot. A growing mecca for millennials, Pittsburgh regularly earns a place on the list of “best cities to live” and “coolest neighborhoods in America.” It’s being hailed as the next tech industry hotspot, and even old-line manufacturers like Alcoa Corp. are moving back to the city. How did things change so quickly?

It helps to put Pittsburgh’s boom in perspective. As urban success stories go, Pittsburgh’s is a humble one. Despite all the buzz, the city hasn’t dug itself all the way out of the deep hole it fell into after the collapse of its signature steel industry. Allegheny County, in which Pittsburgh is located, still only has three-quarters of the population it had in the 1970s.

And Pittsburgh is still a city plagued by racial inequality and environmental problems, with an unemployment rate slightly higher than the national average. But for a Rust Belt city whose basic reason for existence had seemed to vanish, Pittsburgh has done a decent job of getting back on its feet. One way to see this is to compare Pittsburgh to similarly sized former manufacturing centers in the Midwest, like Cleveland and Milwaukee.

Here, Pittsburgh stands out as a modest success. Its population and its economy have grown more since the Great Recession.

And its wages are a bit higher. So while Pittsburgh hasn’t exactly become a boomtown, it’s still an example that other cities in the region should try to emulate.

The common story is that Pittsburgh revived itself by becoming a university-centered technology hub, like Austin, Texas; Raleigh, North Carolina; or San Diego — the industries of tomorrow replacing those of yesterday. Carnegie Mellon University, ranked 25th in the nation, has cooperated closely with industry and government to help revive the town. The school’s Robotics Institute, founded in 1979, and its National Robotics Engineering Center, which helps commercialize technologies invented on campus, have given the former Steel City a new reputation as Robot Town. The self-driving car industry has flocked to Pittsburgh, which now boasts a large Google campus and was the site of an Uber Technologies Inc. autonomous vehicle pilot program. Pittsburgh also has a growing startup scene, with incubators like AlphaLab that help shepherd university graduates into the business world.

Tech hubs can’t be built without smart workers, and universities alone aren’t sufficient to attract them. This typically involves creating things that smart young people like, such as an art scene, fashionable neighborhoods and a lively downtown. The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, funded by foundations created by the industrial titans of yesteryear, has been helpful for creating these.

Pittsburgh has also been welcoming to immigrants, who have helped the city maintain its tax base. And, just like every successful city in the country, it has become more diverse, with a big increase in its Asian population.

So all the typical ingredients of the modern American urban success story are there — an educated and diverse workforce, a great university, and close cooperation between the public, private, nonprofit and academic sectors.

SEE PITTSBURGH, PAGE 9

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Protecting Ohio’s clean energy key for investment Last year, the Ohio House passed legislation that would dismantle the state’s renewable energy and energy efficiency standards. With bipartisan support for this growing sector of the economy, this legislation would be a step in the wrong direction.

Now, as lawmakers return to Columbus and the Ohio Senate considers House Bill 114, lawmakers should take into account the significant economic development opportunities that clean energy investments can provide in the Buckeye State.

At Trillium Asset Management, we know that strong clean energy policies make corporate clean energy investments possible. As a firm that manages more than $2 billion in assets, we see clean energy policy as a way to provide certainty for companies looking to cut energy costs. According to analysis from Ceres, renewable energy and energy efficiency investments are business-as-usual for Fortune 500 companies.

States with clean energy programs and incentives are often able to capture more corporate investments.

That’s why we firmly oppose House Bill 114 and efforts of Ohio lawmakers to weaken the state’s clean energy standards.

Two years ago, lawmakers placed a freeze on Ohio’s energy efficiency and renewable energy standards.

The standards were reinstated by Gov. John Kasich in January 2017, thanks in part to the support of Ohio businesses and employers. These strong clean energy standards have paved the way for businesses to make investments in the state. Just last year, General Motors announced it would power its Ohio manufacturing plants in Toledo, Parma, Lordstown and Defiance entirely with wind energy starting in 2018, and Whirlpool Corp. announced plans to build three new wind turbines to power its manufacturing facility in Greenville, offsetting nearly 70% of the plant’s electricity consumption — enough to power more than 900 average American homes.

Ohio’s clean energy policies make corporate renewable energy investments like these possible.

Clean energy standards help businesses cut energy costs, avoid the volatility of fossil fuel prices and stay competitive. They also help businesses and investors plan ahead and make sound long-term investment decisions. House Bill 114 creates uncertainty for businesses by making changes to the state’s existing clean energy standards. For example, the bill will reduce the state’s energy efficiency resource standard and significantly weaken its effectiveness by expanding what

PITTSBURGH CONTINUED FROM PAGE 8

Another factor may be financial — after a crisis in 2003, the city cut costs dramatically. Although painful in the short run, that probably eased the looming burden of tax hikes, making businesses and workers more comfortable moving to the region.

Which other cities can emulate Pittsburgh’s turnaround? The obvious candidate is Cleveland, a city to which Pittsburgh is often compared. Cleveland has languished economically, especially since the recession, and is still losing population. But it does have a key asset in the form of Case Western Reserve University, which has about two-thirds as many students as Carnegie Mellon does and is ranked only slightly lower.

Cleveland might seem an unlikely site for a technology cluster — but then again, so was Pittsburgh. Already, the school does a good job of commercializing research, though that’s not always the same thing as building businesses. One strategy would be for Case Western to create a large, prestigious, well-funded re-

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BEING INDEPENDENT ALLOWS US TO MAKE OFFERS LIKE THIS.

Personal View

By BRIANNA MURPHY

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counts as efficiency improvements. It will also allow utilities to scale back their energy efficiency programs, depriving not only their customers but all Ohioans of valuable cost savings. These changes will restrict investment and growth in the state by removing the requirements for utilities to invest in some of the most competitive and lowest-cost energy resources — solar, wind, and energy efficiency.

States with clean energy policies are better able to meet the needs of businesses, offering more diverse energy options and helping Ohio compete in today’s global economy.

Since 2008, Ohioans have seen firsthand the economic benefits of clean energy standards. The standards have helped the state create a robust clean energy sector, adding thousands of new jobs and stimulating over $160 million in annual GDP growth.

So far, Ohio businesses and individuals have saved hundreds of millions of dollars each year on their energy bills, and are projected to save over $5 billion in total by 2020.

A recent study also found the clean energy sector to be one of the fastest-growing sectors in the country, employing 105,443 workers in Ohio and 599,775 across the Midwest.

As investors, we recognize the significant economic opportunity presented by clean energy standards, and we are not alone.

In October, Trillium stood alongside Gap, IKEA, Nestle, Schneider Electric and others to urge lawmakers to vote against HB 114. These businesses have continued to show support for clean energy policies and voice concerns about policy uncertainty for the last three years.

Strong renewable energy and energy efficiency standards provide a significant economic opportunity for Ohio. Leading businesses across the U.S. are seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and invest in renewable energy — and companies want to do business in states that align with their programs and commitments.

To continue growing the state’s clean energy investments, Ohio lawmakers need to prioritize clean energy as an important driver of economic growth in the Buckeye State and vote down House Bill 114.

Murphy is a vice president for shareholder advocacy at Trillium Asset Management. Trillium has $2.2 billion in assets under management and is a member of the Ceres Investment Network on Climate Risk and Sustainability. search institute that established it as a leader in one particular area of technology, as Carnegie Mellon did with robotics. One idea might be nanotechnology, given Case Western’s prowess in chemical engineering.

Other than Silicon Valley, the U.S. doesn’t have a Nanotech City; perhaps that could be Cleveland.

Beyond the core of university research, Cleveland should make sure to either establish or enhance the sort of deep, fluid, regular cooperation between elites in business, city government, academia and nonprofits that are the hallmark of Pittsburgh and of Sun Belt success stories like Austin and Raleigh. Downtown redevelopment, funding for arts and culture, transit and the creation of a few trendy neighborhoods that appeal to educated young people are all good goals. Nor should Cleveland forget the importance of immigrants and diversity — a city with few immigrants that is still mostly white and black, Cleveland could benefit from an influx of newcomers.

The road back from the economic devastation of the Rust Belt won't be easy. Even Pittsburgh hasn’t fully made it out. But its success should inspire hope — and good ideas — in other Midwestern cities like Cleveland.

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Focus

MARKETING AND CREATIVITY

Online accessibility - Page 11 | Adviser - Page 12 | Smart speakers - Page 13

Making suds stand out

Market Garden Brewery’s logo, featuring the Guardians of Traffic, is naturally Cleveland. The same goes for its beer names. (Contributed photo)

While quality remains king, marketing and branding are crucial in competing in the craft beer industry

By JEREMY NOBILE jnobile@crain.com @JeremyNobile

There’s a remarkably simple reason why Platform Beer Co.’s line of ciders all carry names of people like Becky, Amy and Maria that runs almost contrary to the complexities that surround brewing itself.

When Platform is preparing to name a new offering — co-owner Paul Benner estimates the Ohio City brewery has already made more than 530 unique beers in about three years of business — workers share prospective names with each other through a company messaging system. The more popular monikers are cross-checked via Google to see if any of the thousands of other U.S. craft brewers have already used it.

Naturally, when there are just so many products to brand, names are sometimes completely random, like Platform’s Bucket of Gloves New England-style IPA. That name draws from a day when brewers were so ecstatic to receive a larger, tub-size container of neoprene gloves they use at the facility that they decided to name a beer after it.

When looking for a name for their first cider, one of their salespeople, Paul Nelson, pitched more than a dozen names, but all were either taken already or just weren’t popular.

He tried so hard, someone pitched just naming the beer after him. Their first cider was christened Paul. And other ciders would follow the format, taking names from Platform workers, family and friends.

“That’s not something that was ever really planned,” Benner said. “A lot of names are duplicated. You want to pick a name that’s not already out there, which is harder than you think. There are 6,000 plus brewers in the U.S., and they’re brewing a whole lot of beers.”

That popularity of craft beer has ebbed and flowed through the years, but the number of breweries in the U.S. continues a meteoric rise.

According to the Brewers Association, there were more than 4,100 breweries in operation in 1873. America surpassed that level between 2014 and 2015 and the overall industry has continued growing ever since. The Ohio Craft Brewers Association (OCBA) reports that craft breweries in Ohio have grown from 63 in 2012 to at least 254 today (some have multiple facilities, but most are unique operations), with roughly 90 more in planning stages.

And while OCBA executive director Mary MacDonald encouraged brewers at the group’s annual conference in Cleveland this January to pursue innovation in beer styles, packaging and distribution to excel in an increasingly competitive industry, the importance of branding and marketing to separate brands from the pack can’t be understated.

SEE SUDS, PAGE 14

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PA G E 11

MARKETING AND CREATIVITY

Sites should meet accessibility standards

By DOUGLAS J. GUTH clbfreelancer@crain.com

Last June, a federal judge in Florida ruled in favor of a visually impaired man who claimed the website for Winn-Dixie — a supermarket chain — denied him the “full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages or accommodations” it offers to its sighted customers.

In the ruling, the judge said the supermarket chain website was closely integrated with its physical store locations, making it subject to the Americans with Disabilities Act. The decision, which didn’t award the plaintiff damages, required Winn-Dixie to update its site, representing what is believed to be the first regarding a website’s accessibility under the ADA. The case reflects an increased push among organizations to meet accessibility standards when pushing out their digital content. According to area experts interviewed by Crain’s, the idea is to provide consumers with a better brand experience while also mitigating any reason for people with disabilities to call their attorney.

Since the start of 2018, Cleveland digital marketing agency thunder::tech has fielded a dozen calls from clients asking how to make their websites easier to navigate, said senior director of development Bruce Williams.

“In this bucket of digital transformation, there’s an aging population, those with disabilities, and transactions that people normally do in person they are now doing online,” Williams said. “As a company, you want your customers to meet you where you’re at.”

Thunder::tech works with middle market businesses in the B2B, B2C, government and nonprofit sectors.

As early as last year, the goal for most marketers was to create mobile-first online content — a mission that shifted steadily into creation of accessible websites, Williams said. The challenge for many organizations

now is understanding what exactly should be provided in terms of digital accessibility features.

There are some guidelines for companies to follow. In the lateWilliams 1990s, for example, Congress amended the Workforce Rehabilitation Act of 1973 to require federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities.

In January, tweaks to Section 508 of the law ensured all government websites would be accessible to people with hearing and sight disabilities using screen readers and other assistive technology. Organizations also can review worldwide standards like the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Some of those standards include the visual presentation of text and how audio and video is portrayed on a website.

When considering accessibility, companies must understand how wide these challenges spread. Experts say digital content should be reachable for not only the visually impaired, but those with cognitive, language and learning disabilities as well.

“You won’t know every customer to the nth degree, but you can talk to experts in the field and look at your audience,” Williams said. “Make decisions without cherry picking one user over the other.”

Auditing online touch points is a positive first step toward organizational accessibility.

While computer-generated scanning services can uncover digital gaps, companies should also have users test their website with a screen reader or magnifier. Nor should websites be the only priority when it comes to building a successful digital business.

“Most clients are thinking of the web, but there’s also shared PDFs and downloadables, or an app or

Companies often ask thunder::tech how to make their websites easier to navigate.

(Bloomberg)

adjacent transactional platform they put out for the brand,” Williams said.

Accommodating impairments is something more companies are taking to heart as the baby boomer population ages, said Randy Knapp, senior assistive technology trainer with the Cleveland Sight Center.

“Vendors are realizing that all

properly from the get-go, you’ll have a site that’s efficient and cost productive.”

Working from a proactive position instead of a reactive one integrates accessibility into the company culture. Williams of thunder::tech suggests assigning a team to review digital touch points on a regular basis, which will help accessibility become a day-to-day element of an organization.

Through the auditing process, content publishers will understand how to modify site images and tags alongside easy-to-read PDFs and video captions.

“B2C brands need to think about accessibility a bit quicker, or at least consider how critical their services are to customers,” Williams said. “If someone has trouble accessing something that can impact their life, you should be paying attention to it.”

Ultimately, online inclusivity represents a business opportunity that’s all too often ignored, said Knapp.

“My money is just as green as anyone else’s,” he said. “If a company makes it so I can shop there, their bottom line is going to increase.”

users have the ability to interact and do business whether they have a disability or not,” Knapp said. “Meeting people who have a wide variety of needs is just good business.”

Website compliance often requires more than just edits to image tags or hyperlinks via a content management system. Graphics, text, templates and web pages may need recalibrations to address issues in Section 508 or WCAG. Cleveland Sight Center’s web page gives users options to change the color or font size. The WCAG-compliant site, launched in 2015, also offers special instructions for image and video descriptions, and utilizes updated site navigation, content and search capabilities designed for users browsing the site with assistive technology.

Knapp, who has been blind since birth, said websites are “living documents” that speak to audiences based on their needs.

“There’s a misnomer that accessible sites can’t have graphic content,” Knapp said. “You can write code so your site looks modern and speaks to accessibility, too. When designed

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PA G E 12

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

MARKETING AND CREATIVITY Adviser: Joe Mosbrook

Stop marketing your products and services The best companies in the world market themselves from the inside out. They don’t focus on external elements like products and services, and they certainly don’t lead with benefits and features. Many don’t even mention what they do. The most successful companies thrive on one single mindset: why they exist.

I ask company leaders this question all the time. Invariably, their response is to make money or please shareholders. But from the buyer’s perspective, none of that matters. So, I ask again: Why do you really exist?

What customers care most about — whether they realize it or not — is why companies exist, what motivates their employees and more importantly, why customers should care.

Ask Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson what drives his coffee chain, and he’ll say, “to inspire and nurture the human spirit.” That’s pretty aspirational for a cup of Joe, and let’s face it, people can buy coffee anywhere.

Starbucks took an overpriced commodity and gave it a mission — a cause most people don’t realize unless they go looking for it. What consumers do see and feel, however, is a brand voice and personality steeped in an existential mission. Everything Starbucks does — like many alpha brands such as BMW, Apple and

Mosbrook is managing partner of Acclaim Communications LLC, a marketing and public relations agency.

Nike — pursues a higher purpose.

At the end of the day, all these companies really do is make cars, computers and gym clothes. But what they do differently is wrap everyday products around a higher purpose. Internally, Nike works to inspire the athlete in everyone, while Apple strives to make life better. Period. And by the way, they sell computers, too.

Small and midsized businesses that aren’t as sexy and lack the deep pockets can still follow suit. They don’t need to aim as high, but the principle remains the same. An accounting firm, for instance, will often claim to have great results, high-quality professionals and years of experience. But that’s what their competitors all say, too.

Instead, the firm can promise to make its clients more successful in everything they do. The deliverables

Starbucks took an overpriced commodity and gave it a mission.

(Bloomberg)

are the same, but the internal mindset is larger. When companies embrace a greater mission, employees become more motivated, customers take notice, and marketing can grow organically from the inside out.

The approach is based on the idea that customers buy on emotion more often than they like to admit. Yes, many people shop price, quality and value, but even rational decisions are unknowingly influenced by the right side of the brain. And when rational thinking doesn’t quite add up, like a $5 cup of coffee, the emotional synapses kick into high gear and take

over the process. Most people don’t know the missions of Starbucks and Apple, but they sense them through multiple indicators.

While major brands often have millions of dollars to project their higher missions, smaller companies can work within their own scope, including email marketing, social media and website content. Many professional service firms market heavily of networking and word of mouth.

But that, too, is an opportunity to sell your mission, not your services.

I can’t count the number of times when someone at a networking event

introduced themselves and their company. When asked what they do, they often give some general descriptor like accounting, law or finance.

Then they drill deeper into specialties. Instead, they need an elevator speech centered on why they exist.

Law firms, for instance, have a great opportunity to explain how their practice benefits their clients well beyond individual legal matters.

This type of response often triggers the question: “How do you do that?”

Attorneys then can detail different ways that a true business partner in law can have a larger effect on the success of their clients’ business. This takes the conversation from what do you do, to why you do it.

The “why” in the answer is why most people will buy your services or goods.

Once your company nails down the “why” into a compelling elevator speech, marketing messages in all other forms fall into place. Any organization, large or small, should take a step back and ask why you wake up Monday mornings.

Why do you exist? Why do your customers care about you and why did they choose you in the first place?

When you answer these questions honestly, then your marketing message will take on a life of its own.

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PA G E 13

MARKETING AND CREATIVITY

Smart speakers have booming presence

By TIMOTHY MAGAW tmagaw@crain.com @timmagaw

Flipping through the Cleveland International Film Festival’s 200-pluspage program guide is an almost religious experience for many film buffs.

This year, they’ll also be able to bark festival-specific orders at Alexa — and no, that’s not one of the festival’s roughly 1,000 volunteers.

The film festival’s creative digital agency of more than a decade — FORM, based in Shaker Heights — developed a capability that allows users of the Amazon Echo family of smart speaker products to request film synopses, showtimes, categories and general festival information using only their voices. It’s believed to be the first so-called Alexa Skill for any multiday festival — film or otherwise — in the country.

It might seem like a novelty, but it’s just one of the many creative uses by local organizations in the burgeoning smart speaker space — an area that many marketers believe could revolutionize the way brands interact with consumers.

Sales of “voice assistants� grew roughly 103% in the fourth quarter of 2018 over a year prior, according to recent research Adobe Digital Insights, and the Canalys research firm reports that smart speakers have become the fastest-growing consumer technology. According to one report, the smart speaker market — which, of course, also includes the Google Home line and Apple’s new HomePod, among others — is valued at $2.68 billion and is expected to be worth $11.79 billion by 2023.

Local organizations are finding many creative uses for smart speakers such as Amazon’s Echo devices. (Bloomberg)

The most striking figure? One in six U.S. adults — or about 39 million people — now own a voice-activated speaker, according to a report from NPR and Edison Research. “From a content marketing standpoint, it’s completely changed the dynamic of how people find information and make decisions,� said PR 20/20 founder Paul Roetzer, whose agency in late 2016 launched the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute, a clearinghouse of sorts that explores how AI-powered technologies are impacting the marketing world.

As a society, many of us are still glued to screens — computers, phones, tablets — but smart speakers

are starting to shift that dynamic. As such, marketing efforts can’t always be based on visual cues. Adcom’s Loren Chylla, the Cleveland-based advertising agency’s executive vice president for integrated media, characterizes the shift this way: Video is still king, but audio is the rising queen. A big reason for that is how integrated it’s become in our lives, and the proliferation of smart speakers is only accelerating that integration. It’s still to be seen how brands can really capitalize on this. “I see specialty speaker listening as a much more personal experience,�

Chylla said. “I’m not expecting to get things in that feed that I’m not interested in.�

He added, “It’s an interesting place. Brands want to be where consumers are. They’re flocking to smart speakers and podcasts, but I don’t know what the natural integration of a brand into those environments is.�

The Cleveland Clinic — one of the most respected health systems in the nation — also has started toying with Alexa. The Amazon personality can now offer users a daily health tip to be read alongside the weather, news or other “skills� in the daily flash briefing. “I think if you look at any forecast for where mobile technology and digital technology is going, we expect over the coming years that voice is going to become the dominant way that people navigate information,� Paul Matsen, the Clinic’s chief marketing officer, told Crain’s in December. “So whereas we’ve moved from desktop to mobile, we’re probably going to be moving from people having to type in for search to more of a voice-driven experience. So it’s critical for us to start getting that experience now.�

So while brands like the Clinic and the film festival see the voice-driven tech world as a way to meet consumers where they’re at, another Cleveland-based firm, Futuri Media, sees it as a business opportunity.

About a year ago, the company, which provides a suite of technology designed to drive audience and revenue growth for media brands, announced that their clients will have access to customized Alexa Skills for their radio stations. The company, which also works with Google and Apple platforms, has made development in this space a priority, according to Daniel Anstandig, Futuri’s CEO, who cited the “potential audi-

Are you an individual with $10 million or more seeking advice?

“From a content marketing standpoint, it’s completely changed the dynamic of how people find information and make decisions.� — PR 20/20 founder Paul Roetzer, on smart speakers

ence and revenue lift associated with this rapidly expanding audio distribution channel.�

Last month, the company announced it had struck a major deal with Portland, Ore.-based Alpha Media to offer its suite of services to the company’s more than 200 radio stations across the country. Among those services are customized Alexa Skills, allowing the stations to make streams and other on-demand content. “There’s so much more to gain with in-home media consumption through smart speaker development and creative voice activation,� Anstandig said.

As for the Cleveland International Film Festival, it’s worth noting that being a forerunner in the Alexa space among its festival peers has had its perks. It was able to snag the “film festival� moniker. “You can say, ‘Alexa, ask the film festival what’s playing on April 7,’ � said Steven Cencula, a partner and chief technology officer at FORM. “You can imagine saying ‘Alexa, ask the Cleveland International Film Festival’ might be a mouthful.�

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PA G E 14

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

MARKETING AND CREATIVITY

SUDS

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10

Some breweries employ their own creative teams in-house to oversee designs and branding, or partner with local agencies, or both. But everyone tends to work on names themselves.

Meanwhile, it’s a commonly considered best practice to tap into a region’s local character to craft a beer brand identity, whether for a brewery itself or its products.

The challenge is connecting all those dots between names, local lore, design and a beer brand, said Marissa DeSantis, a communications supervisor at Great Lakes Brewing Co. who oversees naming of beers, and vice president of sales and marketing Bridget Barrett.

“Our first job is to make a connection between what beer tastes and feels like and the story we want to tell to represent our region,” DeSantis said. “The amount of time we spend linking taste and experience to beer is very, very intentional.”

The first beer DeSantis named was Great Lakes’ Alchemy Hour Double IPA, which was later re-released as Chillwave Double IPA (the renaming was due to a trademark incident).

The latter name was inspired by a

Platform Beer’s first cider is named after employee Paul Nelson, who had eagerly pitched other possible names. (Contributed photo)

documentary on Great Lakes surfers.

The beer itself is big, juicy, bold and West Coast-inspired (where surfing is, naturally, more popular than Northern Ohio). West Coast IPAs are heavy on hops, which are on the la-

bel’s wetsuit-clad surfer’s board. And the Cleveland skyline is in the background, framed by a breaking wave.

A new beer Great Lakes is releasing this spring is their Cloud Cutter Ale. That design was a challenge for the

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creative team, DeSantis said. The original thinking was to center a design on something tropical, reflecting the beer’s citrusy taste. The bright, hoppy wheat beer features lemon and orange peel.

Then, it dawned on them to tie in something with the historic Cleveland air races — which ties back to Cleveland lore. The beer itself is a bit unfiltered and cloudy, which fits the sky theme. And the colors and imagery are designed to reflect the feel of spring in Northeast Ohio. The label features a bright red plane darting through a blue sky over green fields.

The Great Lakes team will often write a brief containing words they brainstorm in discussing a beer’s flavors, what it makes taste testers think of and what kind of Cleveland story they can tie it in with.

“We are such a story-telling, sharing stories kind of place,” Barrett said.

“With a beer label, you don’t have the time to tell a whole story, so the image needs to take everything in that brief and everything we talk about in sampling the beer and put it into an image the customer can connect with immediately in a crowded space.”

Great Lakes saw the boom in craft beer coming a few years ago, which is why it redesigned its general logo with Cleveland agency Brokaw Inc. It was more of a brand refresh, said Brokaw associate creative director Steve McKeown, to remind customers to look at Great Lakes as more competition was coming online.

The new design is slightly more rectangular than the old one, yet maintains a lot of the blackness and billboard look the label has always had. That’s an intentional design, intended to give the six packs and cases a unified feel when stacked together on retail shelves and sales floors.

With craft beer eating into the big beer industry dominated by brands like Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors, but still composing just 12% of the market, craft beer has plenty of room to convert drinkers. Established brands like Great Lakes will enjoy a steady customer base. So besides remaining generally appealing, designs are meant to catch the attention of new drinkers with their looks before claiming that person’s first swig.

“We know there’ll be a good experience with the taste,” DeSantis said.

“But if it doesn’t look good on the shelf, you may not have that first taste.”

Quality remains king Market Garden Brewery’s name is influenced by the West Side Market being near its Ohio City facility. It’s also a name owner Sam McNulty feels “resonates widely with people as auspicious, optimistic, aspirational, natural and bold, and has the happy sound of a place you want to be.”

Its logo, featuring the Guardians of Traffic, is naturally Cleveland, as are many of its beer names like Prosperity Wheat and Progress Pilsner, two of its flagship beers that take their names from the slogan on the city flag: progress and prosperity.

Crafting a strong, local identity was always a priority for the brewery long before it considered expanding into other markets.

“In recent years, we’ve watched many startup breweries go straight into distribution and throw money at growing their brand through big-budget advertising, marketing and sponsorship deals. My business partners and I are taking the long view on our business as we distinctly recall the craft beer bubble of the 1990s and the bubble bursting, causing many to go bankrupt and lose all their investment,” McNulty said. “We waited five years after opening the Market Garden brewpub to expand into distribution. We knew we wanted to have a strong brand and perfected recipes before we sent our beers outside our four walls.”

Marketing and branding are increasingly significant as the competition among craft brewers ratchets upward, particularly when it comes to winning those first tastes.

But those in the brewing scene say those elements of the business must take a back seat to quality first and foremost.

And the fact quality may be lacking as the industry becomes more saturated spells opportunity for some brands to stand out from the pack regardless of how eye-catching or thought-provoking their imagery is.

“Marketing is certainly important to win that first purchase of a pint or six pack,” McNulty said. “But only the most perfectly brewed, flavorful beer will win the second purchase and onward.”

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

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PA G E 15

THE LIST

Largest Marketing Firms - Service Providers Ranked by Number of Full-Time Employees THIS YEAR

COMPANY

FULL-TIME EMPLOYEES

YEAR FOUNDED

REPRESENTITIVE CLIENTS

SPECIALTIES

TOP LOCAL EXECUTIVE

1

SapientRazorfish 629 Euclid Ave., 15th floor, Cleveland (216) 896-8900/www.sapientrazorfish.com

160

1995

Sherwin-Williams, Signet Jewelers, Whirlpool, Cardinal Health, PVH, Entegris

Digital business transformation, IT modernization, marketing transformation, customer experience, commerce, data and artificial intelligence

Mark Eckman, managing partner

2

Marcus Thomas LLC 4781 Richmond Road, Cleveland (216) 292-4700/www.marcusthomasllc.com

140

1937

Akron Children's Hospital, Eagle Family Foods Group, KeyBank, MTD Products, Ohio Lottery, Momentive Performance Materials

Advertising and marketing communications, including digital, mobile, creative, social, content marketing, PR, research and media

James Nash, managing partner

3

The Adcom Group Inc. 1370 W. 6th St., 3rd floor , Cleveland (216) 574-9100/theadcomgroup.com

100

1989

Cleveland Clinic, Sherwin-Williams, Moen, Ridgid, Papa John's, Giant Eagle

N/A

Joe Kubic, CEO

4

Wyse 668 Euclid Ave., Cleveland (216) 696-2424/www.wyseadv.com

65

1951

Marathon Petroleum, Parker Hannifin, Huntington National Bank, Sherwin-Williams, Cleveland Clinic, Federal Mogul

N/A

Michael Marino, president, CEO Margaret Weitzel, executive vice president

5

Falls Communications 50 Public Square, Floor 25 , Cleveland (216) 696-0229/fallscommunications.com

64

1994

Duck Tape, Downtown Cleveland Alliance, KeyBank, Moen, Sherwin-Williams, Vitamix

PR, marketing and corporate communications, investor relations, crisis management, government affairs, branding, digital

Robert Falls, president, CEO

6

Linkmedia 360 2 Summit Park Drive, Suite 630, Independence (216) 447-9400/www.linkmedia360.com

56

2004

Allstate Insurance, StorageMart, CNH Global, Colonial Penn, ITW, 3M, JELD-WEN, Ethan Allen

Digital marketing, analytics, directional and performance media

Dave Wolf, managing partner Chad Luckie, managing partner, digital

7

AKHIA 85 Executive Parkway, Suite 400, Hudson (330) 463-5650/www.akhia.com

55

1996

PPG, Quanex, GE Appliances, ACRT, Akron Children's Hospital, ICP

Strategic planning, content marketing, branding, PR, digital, internal communications, brand protection

Ben Brugler, president, CEO

8

Direct Opinions 6060 Rockside Woods Blvd. Suite 335, Independence (216) 831-7979/www.directopinions.com

45

1983

Cleveland Clinic, Daktronics, Kindred RehabCare, MarBal, MobilityWorks, SIRVA Relocation

Customer and employee experience and market research studies

Darlene Campagna, president, CEO

8

Dix & Eaton 200 Public Square, Suite 3900, Cleveland (216) 241-0405/www.dix-eaton.com

45

1952

Delta Private Jets, Forest City Realty Trust, Fairmount Santrol, Illinois Tool Works, Lubrizol, Owens-Corning, Sherwin-Williams, Southwest Airlines

PR, investor relations, crisis management, branding, content marketing, social media, websites, employee engagement

Chas Withers, CEO Lisa Rose, president

8

HMT Associates Inc. 335 Treeworth Blvd., Broadview Heights (216) 369-0109/www.hmtassociates.com

45

2002

Mondelez International, Kraft Heinz, Coca-Cola, Deutsch Family Wine & Spirits, Stonyfield, Back to Nature

Brand activation solutions incorporating content, influencer, experiential, promotional, relationship, social and retailer marketing

Patti Conti, CEO, president

11

Robots and Pencils 1215 Superior Ave, Suite M25, Cleveland (866) 515-9897/www.robotsandpencils.com

41

2009

BrandMuscle, Varo Money, Columbia University, Perkins+Will, WestJet

Machine learning and artificial intelligence, bots, mobile, web and full stack development, design, UX

Michael Sikorsky, CEO Len Pagon, chairman

12

Brokaw 1213 W. 6th St., Cleveland (216) 241-8003/www.brokaw.com

40

1992

Sbarro, Tim Hortons, Red Bull, Purell, Great Lakes Brewing Company, Philips

Research and strategy, creative development, social media strategy, interactive development, video production, media planning/buying

Tim Brokaw, co-owner

12

thunder::tech 3635 Perkins Ave., Studio 5, Cleveland (216) 391-2255/www.thundertech.com

40

1999

Pro Football Hall of Fame, Naturepedic, Harden Furniture, Cedar Fair Resorts, thyssenkrupp, Kresge Foundation

Advertising, communications, digital marketing, web development, video and graphic design services

Jason Therrien, president

RESEARCHED BY CRAIG MACKEY

THE LIST

Source: Information is supplied by the companies unless footnoted. Crain's Cleveland Business does not independently verify the information and there is no guarantee these listings are complete or accurate. We welcome all responses to our lists and will include omitted information or clarifications in coming issues.

Largest Marketing Firms - Printers Ranked by Number of Full-Time Employees

THIS YEAR

COMPANY PHONE

FULL-TIME EMPLOYEES

YEAR FOUNDED

1

Jakprints Inc. 3133 Chester Ave., Cleveland (216) 622-6360 /www.jakprints.com

260

2

Hess Print Solutions 3765 Sunnybrook Road, Brimfield (330) 678-5868/www.hessprintsolutions.com

3

BUSINESS DESCRIPTION

SPECIALTIES

TOP LOCAL EXECUTIVE

1999

Jakprints offers eco-friendly products in full color printing, label and sticker printing, embroidery and apparel printing, and large format or banner printing.

Commercial litho and digital printing, apparel printing, stickers and embroidery

Nick DeTomaso, CEO

200

1985

A full-service provider of print production, mailing and distribution solutions.

N/A

Burt Phillips, division director, VP

HKM Direct Market Communications 5501 Cass Ave., Cleveland (216) 651-9500/www.hkmdm.com

141

1922

HKM offers offset and digital printing with specialty UV finishes, large format, direct mail marketing, lettershop services, data management and fulfillment.

Direct mail marketing, commercial printing with specialty finishings in line, large format printing

Rob Durham, president Scott Durham, CEO, chairman

4

Visual Marking Systems Inc. 2097 E. Aurora Road, Twinsburg (330) 425-7100/www.vmsinc.com

119

1962

VMS provides graphics for industrial products, vehicles and signage. The services we offer include design, printing, removal and installation, and inventory management.

Graphic overlays, product identification, decals, lanbels, vehicle wraps, signage

Dolf Kahle, CEO

5

Oliver Printing & Packaging 1760 Enterprise Parkway, Twinsburg (330) 425-7890/www.oliverprinting.com

80

1924

Designer and manufacturer of custom print, display and packaging.

N/A

George Oliver, president

6

Great Lakes Integrated 4005 Clark Ave., Cleveland (216) 651-1500/www.gll.com

75

1931

GLI is an integrated marketing execution company providing commercial print, fulfillment/distribution services and marketing software platforms.

Marketing software, commercial printing, digital printing, large format printing, fulfillment and distribution

Scot Adkins, president, CEO

7

Watt Printers 4544 Hinckley Industrial Parkway, Cleveland (216) 398-2000/www.wattprinters.com

65

1893

We provide commercial lithography and digital imaging, bindery, envelope conversion, database management, mailing services, warehouse/fulfillment and storefront capabilities.

Conventional and digital printing, envelope conversion, mailing w/UV inkjet and fulfillment

John Gergel, president

8

Duke Print and Mail Solutions 33212 Lakeland Blvd., Cleveland (440) 946-0606/www.dukeprint.com

52

1974

Duke specializes in direct mail marketing focused in the manufacturing, health care, insurance and higher education markets.

Direct mail marketing, litho and digital printing, kitting and distribution

Blake Leduc Sr., CEO

9

ARC Document Solutions 3666 Carnegie Ave., Cleveland (216) 281-1234/www.e-arc.com

46

1971

Full-service graphics and document solutions provider for the AEC and facility management industries.

Color graphics, commercial construction printing, MPS, technology

Andrew Ziegler, senior regional VP

10

Ten10 Design 115 Wilson Mills Road, Chardon (440) 286-4367/www.ten10design.com

43

2009

A full-service creative resource focused on providing solutions that meet your marketing needs.

Promotional products, apparel, printing and graphic design services

Casey Zulandt, owner, creative director

11

PM Graphics 10170 Phillip Parkway, Streetsboro (330) 656-1230/www.pmgraphics.com

35

1959

Newsprint specialist serving the newspaper, flyer, catalog and direct mail markets.

Tabloid and broadsheet newspapers, flyers on both uncoated and coated papers, low cost catalogs

Paul McGhee II, president

12

Northern Ohio Printing, Inc. 4721 Hinckley Industrial Parkway, Cleveland (216) 398-0000/www.nohioprint.com

26

1994

Digital and offset printing, direct mail, web to print storefronts, graphic design and marketing services.

Digital foil, sculpted UV, soft touch, specialty finishing, die cut products, wide format signs and banners

Gary Chmielewski, president

RESEARCHED BY CRAIG MACKEY

Get free data on nearly 200 marketing services firms at CrainsCleveland.com/section/Marketing_Services

Source: Information is supplied by the companies unless footnoted. Crain's Cleveland Business does not independently verify the information and there is no guarantee these listings are complete or accurate. We welcome all responses to our lists and will include omitted information or clarifications in coming issues.

PA G E 16

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F E B R U A RY 19 - 2 5 , 2 018 |

CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

AKRON

Studio impresses clients with feats of clay

By DAN SHINGLER dshingler@crain.com @DanShingler

The corporate world has discovered something local art lovers have known about since the late 1980s: Akron’s Zeber-Martell Gallery and Clay Studio.

It’s a small operation run by the husband and wife team of Claudia Zeber-Martell and Michael Martell, but in recent years it has gone from a traveling vendor at art shows around the country to a stay-put operation with an increasingly growing client list.

“It’s a different type of work that we’ve adjusted to, and we get to spend more time in the studio and more time with our gallery customers,” Martell said. “If they want to commission a piece, we can talk about size, color, texture and all of those things right here.”

Those commissioned works are generally for wealthy clients, businesses and area institutions. Recently, they’ve included some high-profile projects around the city, including an installation at the Cleveland Clinic Akron General Hospital and a just-finished clay tile donor wall at Akron’s Ronald McDonald House that took seven months to design and make.

Later this year, Zeber-Martell will produce and install large works at major hotels around Akron.

That last bit of work comes thanks to a grant from the Akron/Summit Convention & Visitors Bureau, which Martell said will cover about $3,000 in materials, while he and Zeber-Martell will donate their work and expertise.

“For us, it was a way of increasing our market and trying to market outside of the Northside area and, in turn, maybe make this (gallery) a destination point for people staying on the fringes of Akron,” Martell said.

For the convention bureau, the grant is a way to help hotels, the Northside District and downtown Akron's art scene, spokesman Jim Mahon said.

The “off-site temporary art instal-

It took the Zeber-Martell Gallery and Clay Studio seven months to design and make the just-finished clay tile donor wall at Akron’s Ronald McDonald House. (Contributed photos)

The husband and wife team of Michael Martell and Claudia Zeber-Martell has seen their business grow since expanding their Northside District gallery.

lations will encourage visitation of the Northside district, provide exposure to our vibrant art scene — and be a catalyst for expenditures,” Mahon said in an email correspondence.

Some of those “expenditures” could be at Zeber-Martell's gallery, which serves as a retail outlet for the studio and carries everything from the functional to the fantastic, including coffee mugs, Zeber-Martell’s well-known ceramic lamps, large vases, bowls and wall installations.

While the items are not going to cause most major art buyers to flinch with their prices, they are neither cheap or inexpensive.

“Mugs aren’t $20; they’re $39,” Zeber-Martell joked in response to a question. “And we go up to maybe $5,000 or $8,000 for some wall pieces.”

But you can also find a pair of $24 earrings and a few other small items, she noted.

Things always haven’t been so stationary for the pair. Up until 2010, they took their work to clients, rather than the other way around, and hit major arts and crafts show around the country. That meant a lot of bubble-wrapping and driving — something the two said they don’t miss, though they do miss seeing the people they’ve come to know at big shows in Ann Arbor, Mich., and other places.

Now the only show they attend each year is the Boston Mills Artfest.

“We have turned Boston Mills into a sort of showcase of new work for us.

We do one or two pieces that are major art pieces, and we usually sell them at the show,” Zeber-Martell said.

They’ve been at their present location for 30 years but only opened their existing gallery in 2010, when they doubled the space of their facility to about 4,300 square feet.

“The gallery that’s up front now is eight years old, but prior to that our side gallery, which is connected to the front space, was our gallery — but we had no street space,” Martell said, explaining that the original smaller gallery was only exposed to a side alley.

The expansion is largely because of

the increasing popularity of the duo’s work and that of a few other artists whose work they sometimes feature.

But it’s also a sign of how much more activity there is around downtown Akron and the Northside District. Without that activity, there would not be enough foot traffic.

That was not the case when Zeber-Martell opened in the late 1980s.

“Back then, it was just us and Luigi’s, the pizza place,” Martell recalled.

Nicole Mullet, executive director of the nonprofit ArtsNow, an arts advocacy and promotion group for Summit County, said Zeber-Martell is exactly the type of business she seeks to attract.

“They may not have dozens of employees, but when you talk about artists who work in building the community that retains and attracts talent, Claudia and Michael are who we’re talking about,” Mullet said.

“They are a big part of the energy and success we’re seeing around the Northside District, and they’ve supported downtown for years and years,” she added.

It’s worked out well for the Zeber-Martell business, too, which has been growing steadily, especially since the larger gallery opened. That retail space, combined with commissioned work, complete the mix that provides the studio and gallery’s revenue stream today, the couple said.

“We’ve had steady growth for the past seven or eight years now … It’s not just retail walk-in traffic. There are all those other pieces and parts that make up our income stream,” Martell said.

The operation remains small, though, but that’s largely by design.

“The two of us do most of the work.

We do have three employees who help us with the gallery and some of the production work … but our hands are on every piece ,and that’s important to a lot of clients,” Zeber-Martell said.

But there’s a lot to keep up. The pair do not disclose the business’ revenues, but said they are busier than ever and more productive than ever.

“We just had seven tons of clay mixed up for us,” Martell said.

Safeguard by Prime sees growth in independence

By JUDY STRINGER clbfreelancer@crain.com

For most Northeast Ohio business owners — at least those who still consider themselves Browns fans — the prospect of seeing their team win a Super Bowl seems so out of reach, it’s more akin to a fantasy than a dream.

Tim McMahon, the new owner of Safeguard by Prime in Streetsboro, is not one of those guys. The Philadelphia-based executive is basking in the glow of the Eagles’ NFL title.

“It’s been very exciting,” McMahon said. “I had been spending time with my Ohio team in the weeks leading up to game day (and) it was honestly something I did not have too much time to dwell on. But as the Super Bowl drew closer, and I got back to Philadelphia, the reality of it really hit home.”

McMahon took over Safeguard by Prime late last year, franchising the business supply distributorship from his previous employer, Safeguard, a

division of Deluxe Corp. based in Dallas. The eight-person company with annual sales of $2.6 million in 2017 had been under the corporate umbrella McMahon since 2013, when Safeguard bought Prime Business Solutions, a then nearly 40-year-old print shop and business supplier in Akron.

The Prime acquisition was part of a corporate strategy to build out Safeguard’s company-operated division, according to Scott Sutton, vice president of franchise development at Safeguard. Recently, Safeguard made the decision to focus on five key verticals, Sutton said. Spinning out Prime

by Safeguard made sense because its customer base is much broader than the targeted industry sectors and, Sutton admitted, the Streetsboro operation simply performed better

when it was independent.

“The Prime business is really a local and a regional business that served accounts in those markets the best when it was owned by a passionate, entrepreneurial business owner,” he said.

Born and raised near Safeguard’s original corporate office in Lansdale, Pa., McMahon was exposed to the printing and promotional products industry from a young age. His father spent more than 30 years building a career at Staples, hiring McMahon as an account executive while he was still in college.

McMahon joined Safeguard shortly after graduating from Drexel University. As a member of the franchising team that helped other entrepreneurs run their businesses more efficiently, he let management know when the time was right for him to take an ownership role.

“I always had a dream of running my own business, although I did not know what it would look like or when,” McMahon said. “With Safe-

guard by Prime, I saw the opportunity to manage a self-sustaining business with the right people in the right roles. I would not have to micromanage the team, but instead could continue to support them in their roles and give them the tools to become more successful.”

McMahon said the Streetsboro operation prides itself on being a company’s “single source” for all of its custom printing and promotional needs.

He’s heard from plenty of businesses about the pain and inefficiency of trying to manage seven or eight different vendors for things like logo apparel, trade show displays, business forms and direct mail.

“We make things a lot easier for our customers and a lot more efficient,” he said.

In addition to its Streetsboro headquarters, Safeguard by Prime has a presence in Youngtown and Spartanburg, S.C. McMahon also is actively seeking an account representative in the Philadelphia metropolitan area

to establish the Prime business there as well. His plans are to grow the company’s bottom line by at least 8% over the next four to five years, adding sales and customer service reps as new orders come in.

“We have a lot of customers in our base that have been buying from Prime for literally decades,” he said.

“My vision is to go out there and find more of those types of customers — sticky customers. … The more product lines we sell and services we are able to provide to customers, the more reluctant they are to leave.”

Through the Safeguard family, McMahon said Prime has access to 750,000 different types of products on which it can put a company logo and a nationwide network of printing and manufacturing sites to meet a broad range of business material needs.

Yet as an independently operated franchise, he said, “We still offer the look and feel of custom service you often associate with a smaller local company.”

CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

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F E B R U A RY 19 - 2 5 , 2 018

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PA G E 17

AKRON

Public, private work propel Triad forward

By KATHLEEN FOLKERTH clbfreelancer@crain.com

While some of the area’s larger corporations and nonprofits are among the clients of Cuyahoga Falls-based Triad Advertising, anyone who has seen campaign mailers for issues on Summit County ballots is likely familiar with the agency’s work.

“It’s a small part of the business,” said Rick Krochka, president of Triad, which is in its 25th year and counts Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., Akron Community Foundation and Klein’s Pharmacy among its clients, too.

But a lot of eyeballs also see the political work. In recent years, the agency has created levy campaigns for the Akron-Summit County Public Library, the Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services Board, and Summit County Children’s Services.

“I like levy work because it’s nonpartisan,” he added. “My focus is really on nonpartisan work, the stuff that makes for a better community.

What I realized is that with partisan politics these days, I don’t want to charge the agency with a political moniker because I don’t want it to affect business.”

But Triad also has headed campaigns for many of the current seated judges in Summit County, and Krochka said he’s also worked on campaigns for late county executive Russ Pry, current county executive Ilene Shapiro and Akron mayor Dan Horrigan.

“I pick and choose, and I’m very selective,” Krochka said.

He “stumbled into” doing political campaign work in Triad’s first year of business, 1994, when the agency took on an Akron Public Schools levy

Triad Advertising in 2016 moved into the Foundry building, a former stamping and welding plant in Cuyahoga Falls. The move helped jump-start the creation of the city’s historic district. (Contributed photo)

campaign. Today, he said the agency doesn’t solicit political campaign work.

“Usually people come to me,” he said. “We’re pretty well-known for the work that we’ve done.”

Triad also has other public sector clients, including the city of Cuyahoga Falls and Summit County Public Health. In addition to creating the Falls’ website, the company created marketing materials and the logo for the Front Street redevelopment project.

Krochka, a Falls native, and his company have a special link to the city.

Triad, which Krochka founded with two partners in Fairlawn, moved to the Falls in 2001 and more recent-

ly, in 2016, expanded into the Foundry, a former industrial stamping and welding plant along the Cuyahoga River.

For that project, Krochka worked with the city to apply for state and federal historic tax credits to refurbish the 1928 building and was successful at getting both. The project ended up being the first in the Falls to be awarded the tax credits, Krochka said, and helped spearhead the creation of a historic district in the city.

Falls planning director Fred Guerra said Triad helped jump-start the city’s efforts.

“We are in the infancy of creating a historic preservation plan, and when they needed the tax credits, we put everything into high gear,” Guerra said.

REAL ESTATE

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BUSINESS SERVICES

Krochka said Triad now has 14 employees who provide web design, social media, graphic design, copywriting and public relations for clients.

The office has Krochka room for double that number, but Krochka is comfortable with the company’s size for now.

“We’re growing strategically. We’re growing based upon the work out there that there is to do,” he said.

He said Triad brought in about $1.3 million in revenue last year. The previous year, which included several big political campaigns, was at about $1.8 million. Krochka projected that this year the company could top $2 million for the first time.

The agency has seen the industry change with the addition of digital media, Krochka said. Several years ago, Triad created its Next Level Interactive division to focus on digital marketing and website design. As those became more integral to ad campaigns, Krochka eliminated that name and offered all services under the Triad banner once the agency moved into the Foundry.

Digital platforms have also made it possible to provide clients with a wealth of data on how much their efforts are working, and that has been a plus for the industry, Krochka said.

“Clients are demanding it,” he said.

“They want to know the data.”

Among Triad’s biggest accounts are business-to-business ones such as Smithers-Oasis in Kent and nonprofits such as the Akron Community Foundation, Burton D. Morgan Foundation, OMNOVA Solutions Foundation and United Way of Sum-

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mit County.

Theresa Carter, president of OMNOVA Solutions Foundation, said she’s worked with Triad since its inception. Triad produces the foundation’s annual report, logos and other collateral materials.

Carter said that she was impressed with Triad’s proposal about three years ago to produce the foundation’s annual report as an online-only publication that included video.

“The work we have done with them has evolved over the years,” she said.

She also appreciates Triad’s contributions to the community. The agency has provided thousands of dollars of pro bono marketing work to nonprofits through its Design4Good program. This year, 29 nonprofits applied, and Triad staff members selected 15, ranging from the Summit County Historical Society and the Soap Box Derby to the Akron Urban League and Akron Soul Train.

Looking forward, Krochka said he wants to keep doing the kind of solid work for which Triad has become known.

“There are a few agencies in Northeast Ohio. It’s not like we’re the only ones around,” he said. “There’s plenty of work to go around. It’s just a matter of what are you (best) aligned with … and how do you best fit in and help folks.”

At 56, Krochka said he expects to head up the agency for several more years. But he does plan to focus this year on a succession plan for the business “We have a great strategic team,” he said. “Most of my people have been here with me for years. I want to make sure we can keep them together and be looking toward building that future and their future. They are our biggest asset.”

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PA G E 18

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F E B R U A RY 19 - 2 5 , 2 018 |

CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

ADVERTISING SECTION

MBA

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www.crainscleveland.com/onthemove

To place your listing or for more information, please call Lynn Calcaterra at (216) 771-5276 or email lcalcaterra@crain.com

ACCOUNTING

weatherhead.case.edu

REAL ESTATE

FINANCIAL SERVICES

CONSTRUCTION Scott Baum Vice President of Project and Development Services

Amicon Construction

W. Edward Decker

Kim L. Oeder

Lauren Turkisher

Kimberly Campbell

Principal

Chief Compliance Officer & President, Inverness Securities Inc.

Vice President, Hedge Fund Operations

Senior Escrow Officer

Ancora

Ancora

Ancora is happy to announce that Mr. Kim L. Oeder has joined the firm as Chief Compliance Officer and President of Inverness Securities, Ancora’s broker-dealer. Kim brings two decades of industry experience to Ancora including time as a CCO. Kim is a FINRA registered representative and registered principal. He also holds a Life & Health insurance license. We look forward to working with Kim in his new role and offer a sincere welcome to the Ancora family.

Ancora welcomes Ms. Lauren Turkisher to the firm as Vice President of Hedge Fund Operations. Lauren will provide operations support for the firm’s Alternative Investment products. She brings her experience in investment and trading operations, risk management, technology and compliance to Ancora from her time with large New York firms such as Morgan Stanley and Bank of America - Merrill Lynch. We are happy to have Lauren join our team and wish her a warm welcome and success in her new role.

ACCOUNTING

ACCOUNTING

HW&Co. HW&Co. is pleased to announce that Ed Decker, CPA, MT, has joined the firm as a Tax Principal. Ed brings a strong background in tax planning, consulting and compliance for corporations, partnerships and individuals. He services clients in a variety of industries including manufacturing, wholesale distribution and professional services. Ed has also successfully represented clients in Internal Revenue Service examinations and examinations at the state and local levels.

ACCOUNTING

First American Title Insurance Company First American Title Insurance Company is pleased to announce the addition of Kimberly Campbell as Senior Escrow Officer. Kim will be responsible for all aspects of closing commercial real estate transactions from escrow to underwriting. She has over 30 years of experience and is well known in the commercial title insurance industry. Kim most recently worked at Stewart Title.

ACCOUNTING

Steven Brinker, CPA

Yanka Chanenka, CPA

James Geitz, CPA

Todd Long

Manager

Manager

Senior Associate

The Siegfried Group, LLP

The Siegfried Group, LLP

The Siegfried Group, LLP

The Siegfried Group, LLP

Steven Brinker, CPA, joins the Cleveland Market as a Manager. He earned his Bachelor of Science in accounting from the University of Akron and then held roles at SS&G, Inc. and BDO. With his mental agility, he continually creates solutions that provide exceptional value for his clients.

ACCOUNTING Tyler Martin Associate Manager

The Siegfried Group, LLP Tyler Martin joins Siegfried’s Cleveland Market as an Associate Manager. He is a dedicated professional with proven experience in delivering high-quality service.

Martin earned his Bachelor of Business Administration in accounting and finance from Kent State University and was most recently a Senior Auditor at EY.

Yanka Chanenka, CPA, joins Siegfried’s Cleveland Market as a Manager. His consistent and steadfast nature help him bring calm to hectic situations. He earned his Bachelor of Business Administration in accounting at Loyola University. Most recently, Chanenka was an Assurance Manager at PwC.

ACCOUNTING Vince Sacco, CPA Associate Manager

The Siegfried Group, LLP Vince Sacco, CPA, joins the Cleveland Market as an Associate Manager.

Before this, Sacco worked at RSM for seven years. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a concentration in accounting from Ohio State University. His commitment to demonstrate leadership with a sound vision allows him to accomplish objectives in a thorough and complete manner.

James Geitz, CPA, joins Siegfried’s Cleveland Market as a Senior Associate. Creative and thoughtful, Geitz earned his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a focus on accounting and business operations from the Ohio State University and most recently served as a Senior Assurance Associate at EY.

ACCOUNTING Bob Vecchione, CPA Manager

The Siegfried Group, LLP Bob Vecchione, CPA, joins Siegfried’s Cleveland Market as a Manager. He has a collaborative approach to solving problems and a strong desire to bring out the best in his teams.

Vecchione earned his Bachelor of Science in accounting from Ohio State University and was most recently an Audit Manager at RSM.

Senior Associate

Todd Long joins Siegfried’s Cleveland Market as a Senior Associate. Before this, Long was at RSM as a Senior Assurance Associate. He uses a self-reliant approach to problem solving, which allows his team members to devote their effort and energy to their unique skillsets. He studied accounting at Kent State University, earning a Bachelor of Business Administration.

MANUFACTURING

Amicon Construction, Inc. has announced a new addition to its team, Scott Baum, who will serve as vice president of project and development services. Baum comes with more than 12 years of experience and has managed a wide range of projects, including those for United Air Lines and Bank of America. In his new role, Baum will continue to coordinate various disciplines including design, construction, furniture, IT, AV, and move management. Baum graduated from The Ohio State University.

NONPROFITS Michael Ferry Director of Corporate and Community Partnerships

The Foundry Community Rowing and Sailing Center The Foundry Community Rowing and Sailing Center is pleased to announce that Michael Ferry has been named to Director of Corporate and Community Partnerships.

Michael’s business development experience and robust corporate network will attract program support for the non-profit Foundry.

As Director, Michael will create strategic corporate and community partnerships guaranteeing a positive space for youth fitness and empowerment through the nautical sports of rowing and sailing.

KNOW SOMEONE ON THE MOVE? For more information or questions regarding advertising in this section, please call Lynn Calcaterra at (216) 771-5276 or email: lcalcaterra@crain.com

MANUFACTURING

Shelley Price

Diane Walsh

Vice President, Product Marketing

Vice President, Market Development and Sales Operations

ShurTech Brands, LLC Shelley Price has been promoted to VP, Product Marketing for ShurTech Brands, LLC. With more than 20 years at ShurTech, Price has built her career both in the company’s sales and marketing departments. Most recently, she served as Director of the company’s Do-It-Yourself/Professional business. In her new role, she will be responsible for product marketing for all of the company’s business units.

Price will also sit on ShurTech’s Executive Management Committee.

ShurTech Brands, LLC Diane Walsh has been promoted to VP, Market Development and Sales Operations for ShurTech Brands, LLC. Walsh, a 26-year veteran of ShurTech, will be responsible for leading the market development and field sales team educating trade personnel on products and capabilities, as well as spearheading its customer support areas, including category management, customer supply chain, pricing and visual merchandising and design. She will also sit on the ShurTech Executive Management Committee

CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

Source Lunch

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F E B R U A RY 19 - 2 5 , 2 018

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PA G E 19

Courtney Gras

Program director, Bounce Innovation Hub If Courtney Gras wasn’t home-schooled, she might not be where she is today. “That kind of experience — I never really sat in a classroom from 9 to 5 — I think is why I did not fit very well into a 9 to 5 job when I tried it when I went to work for NASA. In a lot of ways ... I think homeschooling was like my entrepreneurship training.” That experiential learning has served her well. Gras, a University of Akron grad, has traveled a path that includes time as an electrical engineer at the NASA Glenn Research Center, a founder of her own tech startup and the executive director of Launch League. Now her passion for entrepreneurship has led her to Akron’s new Bounce Innovation Hub. Gras, a habitual early riser who can be so focused that she wrote an entire book over three weekends, is excited to inspire others and work as a facilitator in the startup community.

“I think the best way we can inspire others to come together and support our entrepreneurs and innovators is to get better at telling our stories — the good and the bad,” she said. Bounce will hold an open house and official kickoff on April 13. — Sue Walton

Five things Guilty pleasure?

“As an avid runner and fitness enthusiast, none of my pleasures are guilty.”

Best movie line ever?

“Don’t panic,” from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”

If Akron wasn’t your home, where would you live?

“Somewhere warmer than Akron.”

Biggest regret?

“Don’t believe in them.”

Best piece of advice you’ve gotten? “ ‘Following the crowd will get you nowhere.’ Thanks, Mom.”

Lunch spot Nervous Dog Coffee Bar 4161 Steels Point, Stow

The meal A “Kennel Club” sandwich of turkey, ham, bacon, provolone and white wine mustard on whole wheat toast and water for one, and chamomile tea for the other, who was feeling under the weather.

The vibe The coffee bar chain has a casual, rustic feel with all the usual coffee offerings, plus some whopping sandwiches and quiches for the lunch crowds.

The bill $ 15.11 with tip

How does Bounce differ from its predecessor, the Akron Global Business Accelerator?

Bounce is an expansion to the accelerator. Bounce follows a new model for building a collaborative innovation ecosystem. The goal of an innovation hub is to provide both physical space and programming that empowers a diverse group of innovators to create, collaborate and commercialize together. Along with new programming, we will reimagine what the physical space offers by adding a maker space, co-working space, new meeting areas, a community café and more. At Bounce, we’ll continue to serve scalable startups, but also serve local corporations and universities, as well as the small business, makers/ hobbyists, and the arts community.

We’re also collaborating with regional partners in Cleveland, Kent, Youngstown and others.

What happened with Design Flux Technologies, the startup you founded?

I co-founded Design Flux as an undergraduate student in electrical engineering at the University of Akron.

Design Flux was building a software-defined power management system to reduce cost in clean energy applications. As a product company, our team faced major challenges with fundraising in the clean tech space at a time when funding was limited.

Ultimately, my co-founders and I ran into differences of opinion on strategy with one of our team members and decided to walk away from the company. The upside to this experience was the connections that we made and the lessons we learned raising funds. Today, I’m happy to have the chance to help others by spending part of my time as an entrepreneur in residence at the Tech Belt Energy Innovation Center in Warren.

What kind of programming are you offering?

The key differentiator of Bounce is our focus on connecting stakeholders and empowering those groups to work together. So, our programming is focused on building bridges where they didn’t exist before — for example, connecting local corporations to startups and universities, connecting the arts community to the tech startup community — while promoting complementary programs in the region.

We want to ensure we don’t duplicate or recreate programs that already exist, so a big focus for Bounce in its early stages is working closely with regional program leaders so we can refer our members to the programs that best fit their needs. We’re planning corporate/startup matchmaking programs, technology showcases and a new mentoring program.

You’ve written a book. What’s it about?

My book is called “Entrepreneur is a Verb.” It’s a book on applying the entrepreneur mindset to find success in your career. Through my experience, I started to look at my career as if it were a startup company, and I was the product. Thinking in this way opened up incredible opportunities, and I wanted to share that story with others who might be stuck in a rut or questioning their career path.

What attracted you to working with Bounce?

After spending over seven years working with the clean energy startup I co-founded in college, I became very familiar with the NEO startup ecosystem, the process of starting a company and the struggles that come with that process. Through the experience of losing the company I founded, I found a passion for helping other founders navigate the startup process and wanted to find a way to take the lessons I learned to support founders in a bigger way.

Why is Akron home?

I love the people, and I tell people I stay here because of the fact that my network is here. And if I were to try to do what I’m doing with Bounce, to pick up and move to another region, I would not be able to do my job, literally, because all the connections I have here, the ways I can help founders, the knowledge that I have of the investment scene, the support scene ... if I were to move somewhere else, I wouldn’t have that knowledge and I wouldn’t have those connections.

You’re passionate about the startup scene. How do you inspire others to be?

I believe I’m passionate about it because I did it. I saw firsthand what founders experience, the good and the bad, and that gives me a unique perspective and level of empathy that I don’t think you can have unless you’ve been there, done that.

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