Crain's Cleveland Business

VOL. 39, NO. 21

MAY 21 - 27, 2018

Source Lunch

The List Public companies in Northeast Ohio Page 34

Youth Opportunities Unlimited president and CEO Craig Dorn Page 39

CLEVELAND BUSINESS

FINANCE

SUCCESS IS IN VICTORY’S SIGHT

By JEREMY NOBILE jnobile@crain.com @JeremyNobile

The largest money manager in Northeast Ohio, which has been rather quietly amassing size for well over a century, has achieved explosive growth since a management-led and private equity supported separa-

tion from KeyCorp a few years ago.

Now, following a recent IPO, Brooklyn, Ohio-based Victory Capital Management's parent company, Victory Capital Holdings, is setting the stage for its next era of growth driven by its multi-boutique model and a consistent acquisitions strategy.

“We saw an opportunity in the market to do something different than what was happening, which was our

integrated, multi-boutique model that we have today,” said Victory CEO David Brown, who joined the firm in 2004 while it was still a part of Key. That model, which truly started to develop at Victory following a management-led buyout from Key in 2013, is largely what Brown feels positions the firm to flourish as its industry evolves.

SEE VICTORY, PAGE 37

Victory Capital Management head of capital markets and trading Mark J. Van Meter works the screens at the company’s office in Brooklyn.

(Ken Blaze for Crain’s)

Victory Capital at a glance Victory Capital spun out of KeyCorp following a management-led, private equity-supported buyout valued at $246 million in 2013.

J

Since that deal, the firm has gone from $18 billion in assets to $60.9 billion, 148 employees to 300, 18 investment strategies to 72 and five franchises to nine, plus a solutions platform, VictoryShares.

J

The firm raised about $140 million in a recent IPO (NASDAQ: VCTR). That capital will help support its eventual separation from Crestview Partners, the New York private equity firm that still holds a majority stake in the business.

J

EDUCATION

Business schools bulking up as competition intensifies

By RACHEL ABBEY McCAFFERTY rmccafferty@crain.com @ramccafferty

While competition for enrollees is still fierce, business schools and colleges have done well in recent years.

Business degrees are seen as those with a clear, strong career path, which makes them appealing to families, said

Dan LeClair, executive vice president and chief strategy and innovation officer for the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. On the master’s side, full-time MBA programs in the U.S. have faltered, but part-time, executive or specialized programs have been going strong.

But as businesses have been changed by forces like globalization and increased technology, so must

Entire contents © 2018 by Crain Communications Inc.

the schools teaching students how to run them.

That’s certainly the case in Northeast Ohio. The University of Akron recently announced plans to build a Professional Development Center to house the college’s efforts to help students gain the soft skills employers seek. Kent State University is in the process of selecting a development team to construct a new build-

ing for its College of Business Administration, a flagship project for its ambitious new master facilities plan.

And John Carroll University last week announced a $10 million gift that was helping it turn its business school into a business college: the John M. and Mary Jo Boler College of Business, to be exact.

Universities are realizing this is a “critical time” as business education

is being redefined, and are making investments to support those changes, LeClair said.

The business school has been growing in importance at University Heights-based John Carroll, with more than one-third of the university’s students enrolled there, said Alan Miciak, the John M. Boler dean of the new Boler College of Business.

SEE SCHOOLS, PAGE 38

Focus: Middle Market << Entertainment

complexes make big plays in local real estate. Page 11

7signal keeps firms connected. Page 12 Tax Tips: IRS notifies companies of lapses in ACA compliance. Page 14

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

Solon company says it has the right touch Multi Radiance Medical’s non-invasive laser therapy for pain is being embraced as an alternative to drugs

By LYDIA COUTRÉ lcoutre@crain.com @LydiaCoutre

Patients and doctors are increasingly looking to non-invasive pain management alternatives to drugs — especially against the backdrop of the opioid crisis — and one Solon company is rising to meet that demand.

Multi Radiance Medical, which offers technology developed in part through the Soviet Union’s space program, has seen significant growth in the past five years. The company uses laser therapy to effectively “transform” cells from an unhealthy state to a healthy condition, said Max Kanarsky, president and CEO of Multi Radiance Medical.

“There are more and more doctors that are becoming open-minded to this type of technology,” Kanarsky said. “Not only ours, but just overall non-invasive alternatives to drugs.

And patients, of course, are seeking this type of method, and doctors have to provide it. They have to be on the forefront of innovation.”

In the past five years, Multi Radiance Medical’s revenue has grown by probably several hundred percent, Kanarsky said, declining to share specific numbers. In that time, the company has also grown to 38 employees and moved from a few thousand square feet to a 22,000-squarefoot building.

“We have evolved as the medical

Multi Radiance’s technology uses laser therapy to transform cells from an unhealthy state to a healthy condition. (Contributed photo)

“We have evolved as the medical device company by investing in clinical research that validated our technology and expanding its range of applications.”

— Max Kanarsky, president and CEO of Multi Radiance Medical

device company by investing in clinical research that validated our technology and expanding its range of applications,” Kanarsky wrote in an email.

In the last five or six years, the company has completed nearly 30 research projects and clinical studies and about a dozen peer-reviewed studies.

Right now, Multi Radiance’s core business is in pain management, chiropractic, veterinary, sports medicine and rehabilitation.

“So all of those processes are basically revitalizing tissue on cellular

level,” Kanarsky said. “That’s why this technology has such a broad application beyond just muscular skeletal conditions, beyond just pain relief.

Although that’s what it’s primarily used for in the U.S.” The company works with more than 90 professional and collegiate teams, and in the past five years has begun to pioneer athletic performance improvements using its laser therapy technology.

“Especially in light of doping scandals and performance-enhancing substances, we have demonstrated — and there are a number of professional sports teams that have embraced this innovation — we have demonstrated how our technology improves athletic performance in quantifiable results,” Kanarsky said.

Also experiencing growth in the last few years is the veterinary portion of the business, which has become a “very significant part” of the company’s work. Multi Radiance provides free lasers to animal shelters in Ohio and to veterinarians in Thailand.

“We are giving back by donating equipment to veterinary, chiropractic, physical therapy schools and establishing scholarships for students at several universities,” Kanarsky wrote.

Multi Radiance’s technology is available for home use, physical therapist and chiropractor offices, veterinary offices and more across the United States, as well as in Canada,

Australia and across Europe, with plans to expand into more markets.

The company is also focused on collaborations here in Northeast Ohio.

“I wouldn’t want to disclose specifics at this point because I’m not at liberty to do so, but we are working more and more locally in Northeast Ohio in this biotech hub,” Kanarsky said. “Certainly there’s a lot of talent, a lot of opportunities right here in Northeast Ohio.”

When Multi Radiance moved into its current space on Davis Industrial Parkway in 2014, it sought and received support from the city of Solon.

Solon Mayor Eddy Kraus said the city awarded the company a $35,000 grant to support renovating the building through its Growth Revitalization Incentive Program.

“For us, these are tremendous investments,” Kraus said. “The return on these investments are exponential, particularly when a business thrives and grows like they have.”

In the future, Kanarsky said he hopes to expand the technology for applications beyond pain management.

“We are looking to expand. We know this technology is very effective on a number of conditions that go beyond pain management — a lot of systemic disorders, neurological conditions and beyond,” Kanarsky said. “We are looking and investing into growth and expanding into other areas.”

“OEC gives me work-life balance”

Learn more at OEConnection.com/Steve

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PA G E 3

Cities, firms strike small-cell compromise

By JAY MILLER jmiller@crain.com @millerjh

A year ago, it looked like the state Legislature was going to impose on Ohio communities a set of regulations that would severely limit a community’s ability to control how telecommunications companies planted new telecommunications equipment along its main streets and in its residential neighborhoods.

The equipment is needed for the next generation of wireless communications, called 5G, which, the industry says, will increase data speeds dramatically. This new technology will boost the data-carrying capacity not just of smartphones but of autonomous vehicles and other products that comprise the Internet of Things, as well as for in-home wireless internet connections that will offer competition to current home and business broadband services that deliver the internet by fiber or cable.

AT&T, one of the major wireless providers, said in February that it plans to offer mobile 5G to customers in a dozen cities by the end of 2018, including parts of Dallas, Atlanta and Waco, Texas. Its news release included Cleveland among a group of 500 markets where it plans to make 5G technology available later this year.

Verizon Wireless, another major player, has not announced such broad plans. In an interview with CNBC last Tuesday, May 15, CEO Lowell McAdam said Verizon is looking at four cities, including Los Angeles, for a launch of 5G for fixed wireless applications such as home appliances and broadband with mobile services launching in the first quarter of 2019.

Legislation to limit local control over equipment placement was tacked on as an amendment to a bill that regulated pet shops, Senate Bill 331, that passed during the Legislature’s lame-duck session at the end of 2017. That bill also banned cities from raising their minimum wage.

Many communities were unhappy with what they saw as the state setting standards for what are called small-cell wireless antennas. The cities believed that SB 331 severely limited their ability to regulate where small cell towers could be located and what they could look like. They saw it as an infringement on their home rule powers.

The cities believed SB 331 would have allowed telecommunications companies to attach new wireless equipment to existing light poles, traffic signals or sign poles along public streets or construct a new pole or modify an existing pole that has wireless equipment.

William Hanna, a public law attorney with the Cleveland firm of Walter | Haverfield, wrote at the time that the legislation “significantly impacts a municipality’s ability to regulate the placement, construction, modification and maintenance of ‘small cell’ wireless facilities in the public right of way,” meaning the sidewalks and tree lawns of city streets.

“5G is faster than the current 4G/ LTE (that most smartphones use), but it relies on changing the structure of the wireless network,” said J. Sharpe Smith, senior editor of ALG magazine, a publication that follows the wireless technology industry.

“Right now, the industry is under pressure to create the infrastructure that will be needed to be there” for

“5G is faster than the current 4G/LTE (that most smartphones use), but it relies on changing the structure of the wireless network.”

— J. Sharpe Smith, senior editor of ALG magazine

5G. Sharpe said in a telephone interview that the industry wants to place 100,000 small antennas a year for the next five years to build out their networks. But to build the poles or other fixtures that carry those antennas, wireless companies need to navigate sometimes slow government approval.

Right now, cell towers are regulated largely by the federal government

and by the zoning codes and permitting processes of cities and villages and, according to Sharpe, there are 39,000 communities that “all have their own ideas and their local codes.

So the industry wants to streamline the regulation of small cells.”

To ease their placement and installation, the wireless companies have been lobbying for state laws that would override local zoning and permitting processes and be relatively

uniform from state to state. They thought they succeeded in Ohio in 2017.

But the cities fought back in court.

Victories in a handful of lawsuits filed in the state’s major counties by more than 70 communities held up implementation in 2017. The legal victories didn’t directly strike down the wireless cell regulations. Rather, judges found that the legislation violated the Ohio Constitution’s “single-subject rule” for legislation.

As a result, the Legislature had to come up with new legislation, and it asked the telecommunications industry and representatives of cities and villages to come up with something they all could live with.

Kent Scarrett, executive director of the Ohio Municipal League, who was

one of the community representatives working on compromise legislation, said it took two conference calls a week for six months, with some calls lasting six hours, to come up with a solution — House Bill 478.

Gov. John Kasich signed the bill earlier this month, and it will go into effect July 31.

“478 better and more completely recognizes some municipal authority over these installations in the right of way,” Walter | Haverfield's Hanna said. “331 was pretty draconian and placed very strict and difficult-to-achieve standards on application fees for attaching (antennas) to municipal infrastructure. It really was overreaching in every way.”

SEE WIRELESS, PAGE 7

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From left, the Elk & Elk senior management team of James Kelley, co-managing partner; Arthur Elk, managing partner; David Elk, co-founder and senior partner; John O’Neil, equity partner. (Ken Blaze for Crain’s)

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With ads in print, radio and nearly every sportscast in Cleveland, the Elk brothers are arguably the most-recognizable lawyers in Northeast Ohio.

That’s entirely by design, even though the marketing side of the Elk & Elk business really began in the 1980s, when the firm was reportedly among the first companies in Ohio to buy full back-cover ads on phone books.

However, as David Elk, 79, and Arthur Elk, 70, eye the firm’s 40th anniversary in 2019, the two are plotting a succession plan and the next generation of leadership for their eponymous law firm.

David, the firm’s original founder and a senior partner today, whose wife serves the business as CFO, said that while he expects to slow down, he also plans to keep working as long as he can. Arthur, who’s run the firm as managing partner for years, wouldn’t mind spending a little more time with family, but has no immediate plans to leave the practice.

Acknowledging they can’t work forever, though, the firm has announced that James Kelley III, 49, who has helped grow the business since joining the firm in 2002, will be working alongside Arthur as co-managing partner to prep for a formal leadership transition in the coming years.

“I truly love my job,” Kelley said, noting the firm’s approach to the market makes work fun and exciting whether it’s in the courtroom or outside of it.

“It’s truly a combination of unique, advanced frontline marketing with truly established trial attorneys well-supported by ancillary staff,” Kelley said. “I think the thing that really worked was there became a symbiotic relationship between the marketing side and the trial side.”

For a firm so prominent across Ohio — and one now developing its work in other states — the business started from humble beginnings before becoming the aggressive outfit it is today, whether that’s on the trial floor or marketing on airwaves.

From public office to plaintiff's firm Out of law school, David Elk worked at a Cleveland personal injury firm for about seven years. The partnership there eventually split, and David hung his shingle, starting his own firm, David Elk Co. LPA, in 1979 in the city’s downtown. Meanwhile, Arthur Elk was making a name for himself in Ashland County, where he became an assistant county prosecutor following law school.

Just two years into the job, the reigning county prosecutor went into

“I think the thing that really worked was there became a symbiotic relationship between the marketing side and the trial side.”

— James Kelley III, Elk & Elk co-managing partner

private practice, and Arthur found himself in a hotly contested election for the position.

Arthur ended up winning the 1976 election, making him one of the youngest county prosecutors in Ohio at the time.

He’d go on to prosecute several high-profile murder cases. One macabre case involved a young child beaten to death by his mother’s pimp.

“It was handling cases like that that got my passion, my juices flowing in the law,” Arthur said. “I loved standing on my feet and trying to help the victims of crime.”

Arthur actually announced his candidacy for state senate in the late 1970s. He was seeking a seat then held by Tom Van Meter, who was challenging (and eventually lost to) Jim Rhodes for the Republican ticket in the coming governor’s race.

He took a test drive of sorts in the Senate after planning to run in the race. “The guys there rolled out the red carpet for me,” he said.

But he didn’t love it.

The way government works — the often-slow pace with how things get accomplished, the political races — left Arthur unimpressed.

He left after two weeks. And, seeing a need for a plaintiff’s firm in Northeast Ohio, he pitched a partnership with David.

“With the idea of opening my firm with my brother, who I’m still very close with, I liked the idea that we could start from scratch with two nickels in our hand and try to help people,” he said.

With the reputation he already had, why not seek out work at a one of the market’s large, prestigious law firms during the veritable heyday for Cleveland businesses?

That also didn’t appeal to him.

“The idea of doing something for somebody, doing the best job you could and only getting paid if you’re successful, that was more appealing to me as opposed to working at a big law firm that’s all about billable hours,” Arthur said. “So that’s what I did.”

The two joined forces and in 1984, Elk & Elk was officially opened.

Marketing: a key to growth Phone books were “in vogue” through the 1980s, Arthur recalls.

And while the firm was actively looking at charitable avenues to get its name out there, it was the meeting with salespeople from Sprint that led to Arthur convincing his partners to invest in the back-cover ads. They cost between $1,200 and $2,000 a month, he recalls.

And it wasn’t long before most phone books in Ohio had the law firm’s ads on it. What seemed like a gamble at the time paid off as the phones rang consistently.

Fast forward to 2002, when Kelley was recruited from Cleveland law firm Reminger after battling Elk attorneys on the defensive side for several years.

He convinced the firm to put an even greater emphasis on marketing, expanding the budget there and hitting TV airwaves in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and parts in between.

SEE ELK & ELK, PAGE 35

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

Opinion From the Editor

There’s so much we all can learn

Editorial

Bumpy ride There’s no excuse for the failure of oversight that allowed Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority board president George F. Dixon III to improperly receive more than $1.1 million in health care benefits and unpaid premiums for insurance for nearly two-and-a-half decades.

RTA, to its credit, undertook a swift investigation that revealed the financial abuse and violation of the public’s trust.

(Dixon had resigned on March 29, after allegations of impropriety came to light.) The incident, though, underscores a need for a major change in approach at RTA. Effective immediately, RTA said, board members are not eligible for the agency’s health care plan, and board positions “will be rotated, assuring new voices and fresh perspectives.”

Those are sensible starts. They’ll need to be followed up with creativity and fresh energy in leadership.

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson last week appointed Kelley Britt, a transit planner for the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency, to take Dixon’s seat on the board. More board changes are on the way, as the terms of two members recently expired. Advocacy group Clevelanders for Public Transit has called for the appointment of a regular RTA rider to the board, and count us on board with that idea. There are passionate advocates for transit who deserve a chance to bring vigor to a board that, as CPT pointed out, was “content (in 2017) to reappoint Dixon as (president) for the 24th year.”

A fresh set of eyes is desperately needed in the public transit space.

As CityLab.com pointed out in a story earlier this month, figures from the Federal Transit Administration’s National Transit Database “show a 2.5% decline in total transit ridership from 2016 to 2017, with bus ridership leading the way with a 5% drop.” Among markets with more than 20 million passenger trips in the 2016-17 period, only Charlotte and Milwaukee posted declines larger than Cleveland’s nearly 10% drop.

We’ve maintained that strong public transit is a valuable economic development tool that connects employers with more

potential workers and improves quality of life. A spiral in which declining ridership leads to more service cuts is in no one’s interest.

Addressing these challenges requires political will from elected officials and engaged leadership thinking about where and how service improvements can be made. Among features of the most successful transit agencies, CityLab says, are those that optimize traffic-light timing using “transit signal priority” to help buses catch lights before they turn red; that allow riders to board through all doors; and that install modern fare payment technology.

RTA next month will elect a new president. That person should be ready to work with a new board to get moving.

Progressive, indeed

Our list of Northeast Ohio’s largest public companies, on Page 34, has a new leader: Progressive Corp. That’s fitting, since new leadership is a hallmark of things at the Mayfield Village-based insurance giant.

Progressive vaulted to the top spot on the strength of a 52.2% increase in its market capitalization over the past 12 months, to more than $35 billion as of April 30. The company has been led, since July 2016, by CEO Tricia Griffith. Last week, the company made a move that gave it another distinction: its board of directors elected lead independent director Lawton W. Fitt, a retired partner and managing director of Goldman Sachs, as chair.

The elevation of Fitt makes Progressive the only Fortune 500 company with two women in its top leadership roles. Symbolically, that’s huge. It’s also a reminder, as many studies show, that companies tend to thrive financially when they make sure their leadership ranks are diverse.

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The young people of E City were an impressive group last week during the Young Entrepreneur of the Year Competition.

E City is a yearlong course offered by the nonprofit organization Youth Opportunities Unlimited that teaches entrepreneurship and life skills to high school students.

I felt like I should be seeking advice from them, but the folks organizing the event had already asked me to share some thoughts with the semifinalists, who presented their products and business plans during last Wednesday’s daylong culminating event.

I love the motivation behind E City. Give young people an entrepreneurial mindset.

Make them problem-solvers. Teach them how to develop a business plan and communicate an idea. In short, give them employable skills.

Elizabeth All I could contribute was what I’ve gathMcIntyre ered from the entrepreneurs and successful Cleveland businesspeople I’ve engaged with over the years.

Here are the dozen thoughts I shared: 1. Accept that you will fail … a lot. It’s OK to fail. What’s not OK is not learning from your failures.

2. Career paths rarely go in straight lines. They twist and turn for many reasons. Your career will zig and zag. You’ll start in one career and end up in another. And another. And another. And that, too, is OK. 3. Set a high enough bar. You won’t know what you can accomplish until you push yourself to try.

4. When you’re looking to be hired, remember that good employers are looking to hire someone with a curious mind and character. They can teach skills specific to their business. What they can’t teach is curiosity — the want to know why and how.

And they certainly can’t teach why values matter if a person doesn’t already know. Which brings me to …

5. Surround yourself with good, smart people. Whom you surround yourself with, whether it’s people at the office or outside of work, speaks volumes about you.

6. Be humble. Be confident but not conceited about your strengths and aware of your limitations. And don’t be afraid to NOT be the smartest person in the room. Humility leads to learning because it allows you to ask for help when you need it. And nothing helps with humility more than this next piece of advice …

7. Listen more than you talk. I’ve learned absolutely nothing when I’m talking.

8. Everything you create should start by identifying what your customers need. Always put the focus on your audience. Your job is to figure out the solution — and you can’t do that without being a good listener.

9. Everyone loves compliments, but criticism and negative feedback are actually a lot better than flattery. Develop a thick skin to absorb the learning.

10. When fear and uncertainty grips you — and it will — ask yourself what’s the worse thing that can happen. Very rarely are things as bad as you think they will be.

11. Perfect is the enemy of good. I’ve seen a lot of people burn themselves out, and not accomplish much, because of perfectionism.

12. Be flexible. If you can’t accept change, you will be run over. Our world is constantly changing; it’s just happening faster and faster.

What else do we need to tell these promising young people?

Drop me a line. I am trying to follow my own advice — especially that of points 4 (be curious), 7 (listen), 12 (be flexible) and 11 (it’s not perfect).

I’ll adjust my address the next time I speak to young people and perhaps share your thoughts in this space on another day.

To learn more about Youth Opportunities Unlimited, check out the Source Lunch with Craig Dorn, the chief executive officer of Y.O.U., on Page 39.

Write us: Crain’s welcomes responses from readers. Letters should be as brief as possible and may be edited. Send letters to Crain’s Cleveland Business, 700 West St. Clair Ave., Suite 310, Cleveland, OH 44113, or by emailing ClevEdit@crain.com. Please include your complete name and city from which you are writing, and a telephone number for fact-checking purposes.

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

Personal View

Lessons from 10 years in the co-working space

By TODD GOLDSTEIN

Over the past decade, one of the most significant changes that I have watched is the growth of the entrepreneurial community in Cleveland. When my co-founder and I started LaunchHouse, it was our goal to create a community of entrepreneurs who would help each other build their businesses. The co-working and entrepreneurial scenes in Cleveland are thriving. As LaunchHouse celebrates its 10-year anniversary this May, I would like to share some lessons that we have learned over the past decade.

People, not space If you visit a national brand like WeWork, you will see an emphasis on well-designed spaces replete with frosted glass offices, reclaimed wood desks and craft beer on tap. While those amenities are nice, they are not essential to co-working. Rather, it’s the people. When you have freelancers, startups, creatives and small business owners, all under one roof, magic happens.

It is not enough to believe in your own vision, but in finding others who share it When LaunchHouse left Shaker, we had days to find a new space. Luckily, we connected with Evan and Kerry Klotzman of Alpha Park. They shared our dream of growing our community. Rather than put your energy into worrying about competitors, find those who share your dream and partner with them.

Betting on the success of multiple business sectors rather than just one The strength behind successful co-working communities are ones that cater to all types of entrepreneurs and not just one sector like technology. Cleveland is still a major player in food, engineering and manufacturing, and the best co-working spaces and entrepreneur support systems will embrace those industries just as much as tech.

Serve others before serving yourself Our community began with one idea in mind: helping other entrepreneurs and bringing them together in one place. Selflessly allowing people the flexibility to use our space in a myriad of ways — whether it is building a makers space, allowing flexible leases, hosting events, providing creative memberships deals and offering trades, all help struggling entrepreneurs get off the ground.

Expanding your business is hard no matter the industry Whether you are a restaurant expanding into another location or opening another storefront, a business with traction in one community does not guarantee success in another. We are looking forward to the challenge of opening our second location in Lakewood with our partners.

WIRELESS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 3

Hanna said HB 478 allows communities to set fees to cover their costs with a standardized fee structure. The legislation also eases the deadlines communities must meet to review and process applications, extending most from 90 days to 129 days, and it will require wireless companies to bury most equipment in communities that have underground utilities and meet specific design guidelines in historic districts. The earlier legislation made no exceptions for those situations.

Because the telecommunications companies can’t start installing antenna until after the law takes effect, regional company officials wouldn’t say exactly when

SEE WHAT PRIVATE BANKING SHOULD BE.

Affordable education is necessary for entrepreneur success Entrepreneurs are yearning for quick and effective education rather than expensive and time-intensive solutions. Our recently launched How-To Series has helped entrepreneurs gain the skills the necessary to propel their businesses forward.

Every successful business is 10 years in the making Entrepreneurship is not the path for the impatient, even though that seems to be a trait shared by all startup founders. Critics of LaunchHouse counted us out time and time again over our 10-year history, but we are still standing today. Know that when you start a business you are in it for the long haul.

Co-working thrives when we all can work together as a community 10 years ago, it was just LaunchHouse that started the trend for co-working in Cleveland, but it seems as though each few months a new co-working space starts in the region.

The success of co-working and entrepreneurial support depends on all of us working together for business success. Rather than remain in silos, we ought to look for ways to work with each other and grow the idea of co-working as the new way of working in the 21st century.

I am proud of what we have accomplished at LaunchHouse in our 10 years and am looking forward to the next 10. Cleveland is a city on the upswing, propelled forward by the strength of the entrepreneurs in the region. Co-working is the foundation for that growth and will remain a permanent fixture for supporting the area’s small businesses, freelancers and startup companies.

Goldstein is the founder and CEO of LaunchHouse, a co-working community in Northeast Ohio.

5G service will come to Ohio. But they are glad to be moving on.

“House Bill 478 involved a lot of give and take by the wireless industry and the municipalities, but it worked out well,” said AT&T Ohio president Adam Grzybicki in an emailed statement. “We are currently in discussions with multiple Ohio cities — including Cleveland — on permits that will enable our 5G buildout. We look forward to civic cooperation to enable this service for our customers.”

A Verizon spokesman, Steve Van Dinter, said in a phone interview, “We certainly appreciate forward-thinking communities as well as states. Streamlined permitting helps us bring this technology to consumers faster. It certainly helps when there is legislation that can smooth the process over.”

M AY 21 - 2 7, 2 018

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PA G E 7

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

Exciting Land Opportunity near Cleveland Clinic 5.89 Acres with Frontage on both Carnegie & Euclid Ave.

New biorepository will be an ‘essential’ step for Clinic

By LYDIA COUTRÉ lcoutre@crain.com @LydiaCoutre

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Cleveland Clinic — in partnership with Brooks Automation Inc. — plans to build a 21,000-square-foot biorepository in Cleveland’s Fairfax neighborhood where researchers will study human tissue samples to advance personalized medicine and accelerate translational research.

The new facility will increase the Clinic’s capacity to hold and study tissue and materials from patients.

The plan for a biobank initially was announced in October at the Clinic’s annual Medical Innovation Summit.

At the time, the system didn’t specify whether it would build or renovate a space.

“This is a very important investment of the Cleveland Clinic to commit to our excellence and also the future of our research endeavors,” said Dr. Wilson Tang, director of Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Clinical Genomics.

The construction company, price tag and exact location of the two-story facility are all yet to be determined, but the facility will be somewhere on the south side of Cedar Avenue near Cleveland Clinic, according to a Clinic spokesperson.

The Clinic was founded on the idea of taking care of patients, learning about their diseases and educating others on the findings, Tang said.

For a long time, efforts around studying biospecimens have been led by researchers in their specific areas, he said.

Various clinical and basic translational research groups focus their studies on human biospecimens to

Tang

Erzurum

“This is a very important investment of the Cleveland Clinic to commit to our excellence and also the future of our research endeavors.”

— Dr. Wilson Tang, director of Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Clinical Genomics

gain insights to improve the Clinic’s ability to maintain health and wellness.

The new biorepository will offer a more robust and scalable operation to collect and study biospecimens in the hopes of advancing personalized medicine for a range of conditions, including cancer, heart disease and epilepsy. The new facility gathers those efforts into a centralized space that fosters collaboration.

“So I think that the significance of this is this actually allows various disease states to be thoroughly investigated both by clinicians and investitures at the Cleveland Clinic, but also in collaboration with a wide range of collaborators, both academic and commercial investigators, and over-

all with the active participations with our patients,” Tang said.

Brooks Life Sciences, a division of Brooks Automation that specializes sample management solutions, will manage the on-site operations, including the safe and efficient storing and maintaining of collections of biological material, according to a news release.

“With an international reputation as a leader in medical research, Cleveland Clinic understands the value sample management plays in medical research and is committed to improving patient outcomes,” Brooks Life Sciences president Dusty Tenney said in a prepared statement.

Brooks Life Sciences will begin with the launch of a sample inventory process to annotate each sample within the storage facility before moving material to the new biorepository, according to the release.

“This new biorepository will be a critical resource for our scientists,” said Dr. Serpil Erzurum, chair of Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute, in a prepared statement.

“Biobanking is essential for the evolution of personalized medicine.

The ability to properly manage biological specimens and to compare diseased tissues side-by-side with healthy tissues is essential to understanding the biological basis of a disease.”

The building is expected to be completed in the summer of 2019.

“As a leading health care organization, this provides an unparalleled opportunity to advance understanding of many different diseases, enabling us to make discoveries that are directly benefiting our patients,” Erzurum said.

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PA G E 10

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CRAINâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

At the Table

Architectural Justice is showing its flair for food Why include a restaurant in a design store?

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d driven past Architectural Justice, a handsome brick edifice near the northeast corner of Pearl and Royalton roads in Strongsville, any number of times.

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a super cool space, built Joe from the ground up and Crea dedicated as a gallery to showcase the endless procession of design options conjured by owners James and Darlene Justice at their headquarters in Medina.

And Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d heard that local chef Scott Popovic landed there after closing Vita Urbana, his inventive culinary lab-cum-restaurant and grocery store in Clevelandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Battery Park neighborhood. Its loss just before Christmas was a disappointment, as much for that budding urban community as for anyone who cheers an imaginative, hard-working chef willing to take a chance.

It turns out, Popovic wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t through taking chances, or at least taking a different direction in his career.

After graduating from Johnson & Wales University, Popovicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s career trajectory took him to restaurants in Charleston, S.C., and to Aureole at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas before he returned to his native Northeast Ohio for stints at Moxie, Fire Food and Drink, the Ritz-Carlton and XO Prime Steakhouse. He then spent eight years as corporate chef for Certified Angus Beef in Wooster. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Closing Vida was hard,â&#x20AC;? he said of

bidding farewell to his independent venture with business partner Mike Graley. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I really believe it was a great location, but it was so underdeveloped for so long, when it finally came back it was really hard to bring in customers,â&#x20AC;? he said of a neighborhood that also in the past year lost Graffiti Social Kitchen and Cha Spirits and Pizza Kitchen. â&#x20AC;&#x153;By the time I met with (the Justices), I knew I was done with all that craziness,â&#x20AC;? Popovic said, taking a break in the cushy seating area just off the kitchen at the Strongsville store. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I said, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Look, I no longer want to work all those endless hours, 100 hours a week. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll give you a solid 40 to 50 hours and then go home and live the rest of my life.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x153;I have that here.â&#x20AC;?

James Justice said he and his wife wanted to create a space that reflected a sense of creative adventure. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m an entrepreneur, and weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re always trying new things,â&#x20AC;? Justice said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We wanted to create an environment thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s engaging and enjoyable.â&#x20AC;?

It started with a drive down Pearl Road, a short drive from the coupleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s original center in Medina. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We saw an old gas station there that had been sitting idle, and we loved the location â&#x20AC;&#x201D; right in the Strongsville commons,â&#x20AC;? Justice recalled. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We saw the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;for saleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; sign and decided to make an offer on the property.â&#x20AC;?

Once it was determined that the

Chef Scott Popovic has brought his culinary talents to the Architectural Justice design room in Strongsville. (Joe Crea for Crainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s)

stationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fuel tanks had been properly removed â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a significant environmental challenge â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the couple â&#x20AC;&#x153;shot the owners a low-ball offer.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;A couple of hours later we got a call from my Realtor, and they said, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;You got it.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x153;And then it took a few years for us to decide exactly what we wanted to do with the property,â&#x20AC;? Justice admitted.

Building from the ground up, Justice and his wife designed every aspect of what would become a major architectural and design showroom.

Given the proximity to the commons â&#x20AC;&#x201D; an old-fashioned town green that draws residents for activities yearround â&#x20AC;&#x201D; they decided to add a cafe, an amenity that could draw customers and entice shoppers to linger in the gallery. â&#x20AC;&#x153;At first it was going to be just pastries and coffee,â&#x20AC;? Justice said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;but then we really got excited about adding the test kitchen to the mix and offering cooking classes along with brunches and light meals.â&#x20AC;?

The cooking school is one of the most beautiful in the area. Vast expanses of creamy white marble provide the backdrop to the demo kitchen. About 16 guests can be seated at a communal-style table fitted with hydraulic lifts, which enable segments of the long counter to separate into working areas. Participants join in preparation of ingredients, which are then cooked by the chef and served to enrollees.

Classes and events range from A Tour of Asian Cuisine on Thursday, May 31, to a French Pastry Workshop on Saturday, June 16, and Yoga & Mimosas on Saturday, June 30. A complete list of classes can be found at architecturaljustice.com.

Popovic landed the kind of gig that most chefs only dream of. First, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the thoughtfully curated menu that spans brunch offerings, Belgian-style waffles, a succinct selection of entrees and salads. Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re served from a kitchen equipped with ovens but no cooktops. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The goal was to keep things as

simple and delicious as possible with a minimum of last-minute preparation,â&#x20AC;? Popovic said.

Justice backs that vision. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re trying to find ingredients from producers who just do their best,â&#x20AC;? he said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;In creating this center, we wanted to show off what our guys back in the Medina workshops can do, and the food Scott makes and is serving is an extension of that.â&#x20AC;?

Hello, goodbye J Bull & Bird Steakhouse will be the new name for the former Gamekeepers Tavern in Chagrin Falls. The redesign, expected for a midsummer debut, will include an expanded and covered year-round patio, an open floor plan inside, and separate private dining rooms to accommodate up to 30 guests.

J Columbus-based City Barbecue has expanded into Northeast Ohio. It recently opened a spot at 2870 West Market St. in Fairlawn.

J After a successful five-year run, Cork & Cleaver Social Kitchen in Broadview Heights will close on June 3. Co-owner Brian Okin, who runs the restaurant with business partner Adam Bostwick, said the decision was made after they decided to build on their popular meatball concept, Polpetto. Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll open soon in the space formerly inhabited by River Dog Cafe at 19900 Detroit Road in Rocky River. Okin said he and Bostwick hope to build Polpetto into a multiunit concept.

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M AY 21 - 2 7, 2 018

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PA G E 11

Focus MIDDLE MARKET

At 83,000-square-feet — with mini-golf, laser tag, go-karts and other games — Scene75 in Brunswick bills itself as the largest local indoor entertainment complex. (Contributed photo)

It’s all fun and games in real estate

Northeast Ohio’s expanding roster of entertainment complexes boasts quite the footprint

By DOUGLAS J. GUTH clbfreelancer@crain.com

It’s game on in Northeast Ohio, thanks to an influx of large-scale entertainment concepts springing up throughout the region.

Whether these venues will be profitable over the long run is still to be determined, but their distinctive combination of food and fun point to a potential long-term relationship with area pleasure seekers. New entertainment centers are moving into former grocery stores and retail shops, or built anew as part of a development’s tenant mix. While mega brands such as Dave & Buster’s and Chuck E. Cheese rule the roost, the current business model is strong enough to make room for additional players, said Alex Zorniger, vice president of operations for Scene75, which opened an 83,000-squarefoot, pay-as-you-play venue in Brunswick last summer.

“It’s a good time for the industry, even if it won’t always be this golden,” Zorniger said. “The key to staying in this business is establishing a brand.

Those that don’t engage their community may be a flash in the pan.”

Scene75’s Brunswick location is billed as the largest indoor entertainment center in the region, featuring laser tag, gokarts, a center bar, arcade games and more. The fun and games are bolstered by on-site food trucks from two Cleveland-area eateries, Sauced Woodfired Pizza and River Dog Cafe.

Pinstripes Bistro, Bowling & Bocce is expected to open in June at the new Pinecrest development in Orange Village. (Contributed photo)

Scene75’s Brunswick location, which opened last summer, is housed is a former Buehler’s grocery store. (Contributed photo)

The facility, formerly a Buehler’s grocery store, joined Dayton and Cincinnati as the company’s third Ohio location. Reception has been positive so far, said Zorniger, both at the gate and online. The Brunswick center has a 4.2-out-of-5 rating on Facebook, based on 425 user reviews.

Eclectic offerings have been a magnet for patrons of all ages in Scene75’s first year of operation.

“There aren’t many places in the country putting everything we have all under one roof,” Zorniger said. “People want to have fun outside their homes with friends and family. You just have

to make sure your experience is unique and a quality residential market.

Pinecrest is the perfect site for his $9 compared to your competition.”

Dale Schwartz, the Beach- million facility, he said, considering wood-born founder and CEO of Pin- its mixed-use footprint of retail, officstripes Bistro, Bowling & Bocce, said es, high-end apartments and an upany successful fun center must act as a scale boutique movie theater.

“We had been looking at Beachdestination for the surrounding community. Schwartz’s new Pinstripes’ wood Place and Legacy Village, but location at the $230 million, 58-acre Pinecrest’s tenants share a similar mixed-use Pinecrest development in customer base to us,” Schwartz said.

Orange Village will host 2,000 events an- “Our clientele is family and nually, from bar mitzvahs to birthday par- friends — anyone who wants ties to corporate good old fashioned fun and to get-togethers.

“We’ll be draw make connections among from the surround- people.” ing 20- or 30-mile radius,” said Schwartz. — Dale Schwartz, founder and CEO of Pinstripes “There are a lot of Bistro, Bowling & Bocce corporate customers “We consider ourselves best-in-class who will be coming to us for lunch.”

Set to open in June, the 27,000 in combining entertainment and square-foot interior space will have dining together.”

Zorniger said a strong economy Italian-American dining on each of its two floors, as well as a 15,000 and an abundance of available retail square-foot patio equipped with fire space allowed Scene75 to finance its pits. On the leisure side, the facility expansion. Although the Akron area has 14 bowling lanes and eight in- is on the lower end of the population density scale, the lack of entertaindoor/outdoor bocce courts.

“The true north for us is sophisti- ment venues in the immediate area, cated fun,” Schwartz said. “Our clien- combined with the site’s affordabilitele is family and friends — anyone ty, resulted in an opportunity too atwho wants good old fashioned fun tractive to pass up.

“We look at affordable sites to and to make connections among keep the overhead low, rather than a people.”

Schwartz, a Hawken School gradu- high-traffic retail space,” said Zorniate, had been scouting the East Side ger. “And if you want to get into a new market for a decade, searching for a industry, it’s a fun one to be a part of.” critical mass of robust office space SEE FUN & GAMES, PAGE 14

PA G E 12

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

MIDDLE MARKET

7signal aims to keep companies connected

By DOUGLAS J. GUTH clbfreelancer@crain.com

All over the globe, the productivity of thousands of employers depends largely on a wide array of devices working interruption free within a Wi-Fi network. An Independence software company is at the center of this technological tidal wave, offering a platform that helps organizations meet their wireless performance challenges.

7signal Solutions Inc., in the words of CEO Thomas Barrett, “lives on the edge” of the network where the Wi-Fi experience matters most. This means managing a customer’s end-user device — 7signal currently monitors over 6 million of them — to gather performance data in real time. Granular information tracking provided by 7signal hardware and software gives insights into device functionality or any software driver issues impacting performance.

“Global companies offer a single lens into Wi-Fi, but we focus on the end-user device in a way nobody else can,” Barrett said. “If a CEO is having a terrible Wi-Fi experience on the fifth floor, (the platform) may tell him to switch from the guest network to the corporate network. That is very valuable.”

7signal’s management platform observes devices such as tablets, desktop computers, laptops, pointof-sale handhelds and the types of

“workstations on wheels” found in hospitals. Hospital systems comprise the majority of the company’s client portfolio, along with Fortune 500 entities including Microsoft. Providing a clear window into Wi-Fi is critical for both network optimization and the operational effectiveness of employees, Barrett noted.

“We give the end user a Wi-Fi experience without them having to call anyone,” he said. “What used to be a three- or four-hour problem is now solved in seconds.”

The proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT) — a system of physical devices accessed through the internet that identify themselves to other online devices — has been a major market driver for 7signal, which in March closed a $7 million Series C investment round earmarked for product improvement, customer support and a variety of sales initiatives.

The company investing additional dollars into its real-time monitoring platform can have a direct impact on a client’s bottom line, considering that one hour of network downtime costs an organization up to $300,000, according to a survey from Cisco. It also helps to have a solution that monitors an entire building’s worth of Wi-Fi from a single browser.

“Normally you have all these devices on multiple floors with oneand-a-half Wi-Fi guys working to support this,” Barrett said.

The Christ Hospital Health Network

“We give the end user a Wi-Fi experience without them having to call anyone. What used to be a three- or four-hour problem is now solved in seconds.”

— Thomas Barrett, 7signal CEO

in Cincinnati has about 25,000 unique devices operating across its wireless system every month, peaking at 8,000 to 9,000 devices in service on any given day, said James Vajda, an engineer for the network.

Most traffic is from patients and visitors using the guest network. Internal devices from X-ray machines to IV pumps make up the remainder, with information from these machines transmitting to an electronic medical records system. Faulty wireless adapters or older equipment often lead to larger network problems that 7signal’s Wi-Fi sensors are able to comprehensively recognize.

“With Wi-Fi, a problem may be gone before you’re able to analyze it,” Vajda said. “7signal helps us understand if there’s a problem on the infrastructure side, the client side, or with a different part of the network.

Without a tool like that, you have such limited vision into the network.”

Before hiring 7signal in 2017, the hospital had to troubleshoot its network manually, a time-consuming, labor-intensive process.

“There are other companies doing wireless performance monitoring, but I’m not aware of another company that gives you insight into the device side,” Vajda said.

The company, founded in Helsinki, Finland, in 2006, came to Akron in 2011 with a sales office and network operations center in the Akron Global Business Accelerator. The company moved from Akron to Independence last summer, negotiating a $480,000 forgivable business attraction loan from Cuyahoga County that dictates the creation of 48 jobs at an annual average salary of at least $100,000.

With the aid of Cleveland-based nonprofit JumpStart, 7signal is seeking local recruits for positions in development and customer support. Finding area talent specializing in wireless network protocols is difficult, as mission-critical Wi-Fi has not been a priority for organizations until recently.

“Now everything is pushed to WiFi,” Barrett said. “Suddenly there are Gap stores that look like Apple stores where everyone has a point-of-sale device. If your neighbor has Wi-Fi at their store, you may not be able to process your credit cards.”

7signal sends officials to industry association events and Wi-Fi trade shows to locate talent. The software developer also provides in-house WiFi training, although it takes six to 12 months to fully onboard a customer support rep.

“It would be nice to have more tech-focused degrees locally, and more Wi-Fi engineering would be fantastic,” Barrett said. “My customers need (Wi-Fi engineering graduates), too, but they’re hard to come by, even for bigger companies.”

For now, 7signal will continue to resolve its clients’ network snafus with what it hopes is pinpoint accuracy and lightning quickness.

“We’re able to solve these problems for the biggest companies in the world, and we’re just a tiny company in Cleveland,” Barrett said. “It’s powerful having a company like this here.”

Visit cshco.com for more information.

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M AY 21 - 2 7, 2 018

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PA G E 13

MIDDLE MARKET

Q&A: Steve Potash CEO, Rakuten OverDrive

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Libby ... enables readers of any age to browse and borrow from hundreds of thousands of bestselling books for free.

Working with Cuyahoga County Public Library, we delivered a million digital books last year, and another million through Cleveland Public Library.â&#x20AC;?

Rakuten OverDriveâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mission statement is to create â&#x20AC;&#x153;a world enlightened by reading.â&#x20AC;? The Garfield Heights-based company is meeting that ideal thanks to a significant upswing in the number of schools and international libraries utilizing its digital book lending system.

OverDrive, acquired by Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten Inc. in 2015, supplies digital books to 40,000 schools and libraries in 72 countries, leading to double-digit revenue percentage growth and over 215 million book downloads in 2017 alone. Already dominating the U.S. library market â&#x20AC;&#x201D; nearly 95% of national public libraries lend out ebooks and other electronic content via the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s technology â&#x20AC;&#x201D; OverDrive is also working to get textbooks onto studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; tablets and laptops for use in the classroom. CEO Steve Potash is excited to stand at the nexus of these multiple growth opportunities, both nationally and abroad. As the globe continues to go digital, his company is pushing forward to reach its lofty literary ambitions. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Douglas J. Guth What new technologies is OverDrive offering readers these days?

Libby is an update to the OverDrive app thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been on the market for 15 years. It enables readers of any age to browse and borrow from hundreds of thousands of best-selling books for free. Working with Cuyahoga County Public Library, we delivered a million digital books last year, and another million through Cleveland Public Library. Libby was awarded one of the top new apps on the Google Play store.

What is your companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest current area of growth?

The K-12 education space is our most exciting area of hyper-growth. Our technology is being integrated into learning management systems to assess where a student is in their reading skills. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re working with educators to make sure the right student has the right book, and to make access to books even more effective in many curriculum-based programs.

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What kind of success have you had in reaching international markets?

In the last year or two weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve made investments in foreign markets such as Germany, China and South American countries including Colombia. We already have strong business in the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and other English-speaking areas.

Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re now going into more nonEnglish speaking markets such as Japan, Korea and Taiwan.

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OverDrive was recently named by OHTec as the Large Tech Company of the Year. What does this recognition say about the work youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re doing as a company?

I hope that it acknowledges for the Northeast Ohio business community our reputation for a number of outstanding achievements in technology. Whether youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re a kid in Singapore or someone sitting in the reading room of the New York Public Library, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a good chance youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re using the OverDrive app.

What most motivates you as an entrepreneur in this space?

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m motivated by the knowledge that what weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re doing here every day matters. With literacy in the U.S. an enormous factor for improving peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lives, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re continuing to innovate new ways to deliver the experience of reading to the next generation of leaders. We take the lead from teachers and others on the front lines of serving the community. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re proud to find ways to make them more successful for the benefit of all readers.

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How has the spread of digital content impacted your companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s growth?

Demand for digital books in all languages is accelerating, all due to the proliferation of smartphones and ubiquitous Wi-Fi. Publishers and authors are more invested in developing access to books for the digital reader, and in our case the institutional market of libraries and schools as well. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re always investing in R&D to create tools and services that help our institutions attack the challenges of literacy and deliver better results in the classroom. One thing weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re supporting is digital book clubs for schools that want to inspire students to read over summer break.

What challenges have you met in sustaining this growth?

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PA G E 14

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FUN & GAMES CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11

Leisure concepts are filling the space left behind by physical retail stores, as much of the money now going to online retailers used to be spent at brick-and-mortar businesses, said Tony Visconsi, a commercial real estate agent with Howard Hanna. Visconsi currently represents three regional venues, including the proposed $30 million Topgolf complex in Independence, set to offer climate-controlled hitting bays, event spaces for groups, and food and drink menus.

“Shopping was a source of fun for families, but you still need to give people a reason to socialize,” Visconsi said.

Round 1, a 50,000-square-foot entertainment center and restaurant with arcade games, karaoke rooms and bowling lanes, has been thriving

at Great Lakes Mall, where it anchors a $15 million update of the enclosed Lake County shopping center.

Tony Pestyk, general manager of Great Lakes Mall, said Round 1 reflects a reinvention of the traditional shopping mall into more of a “town center” environment.

“Shopping centers have to provide an experience where you come to be educated, entertained and get a full belly,” said Pestyk. “Round 1 shows our focus on redeveloping the mix of tenancy. We’re no longer trying to get shoe stores, but vendors that will provide a different kind of visitor experience.”

Traditionally, retail and grocery stores are situated near freeways and draw from a large population radius.

Their location and physical space lend to a fairly easy and cost-effective conversion into a new interactive setting, said Michael Solomon, senior director of Goodman Real Estate Services Group.

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CLEVELAND BUSINESS VOL. 36, NO. 47

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ALLYSON O’KEEFE, 37 Partner; Porter Wright

35th Anniversary

CLEVELAND BUSINESS

VOL. 36, NO. 47

NOVEMBER 23 - NOVEMBER 29, 2015 Allyson O’Keefe started her legal career at Porter Wright in 2004 after completing a summer internship there as a Case Western Reserve University law student. Since then, she has worked on many significant deals across Cleveland, including Flats East Bank, The Metropolitan at the 9, Uptown in University Circle and Steelyard Commons, and has been promoted to real estateALLYSON partner.

O’KEEFE, 37 “Young professionals who live downtown are so excited about the city,” said O’Keefe, a Partner; Porter Columbus native who lived downtown forWright 10 years before moving to Rocky River. “The ones who aren’t from here are often more excited about it. When you move here from somewhere else, you don’t for granted.”

VOL. 36, NO. take 47 it Allyson NOVEMBER 23 - NOVEMBER NOVE EMBER 29, 29, 2015 201 O’Keefe started her legal career at Porter Wright in 2004 after completing a sumWhen O’Keefe is not working or spending time with her husband and two children, she can mer internship there as a Case Western Reserve University law student. Since then, she has be found volunteering on the boards of nonprofit organizations and watching college football. worked on many significant deals across Cleveland, including Flats East Bank, The Metropolitan at the 9, Uptown in University Circle and Steelyard Commons, and has been proWHAT INSPIRES YOU ABOUT YOUR WORK? moted to real estateALLYSON partner.

O’KEEFE, Just seeing what Cleveland has gone through in the time that I’ve 37 been here, there’s obvious“Young professionals who live downtown are so excited about the city,” said O’Keefe, a ly a lot of excitement around real estatePartner; development.

I started in 2004 when we were crazy Porter Columbus native who lived downtown for Wright 10 years before moving to Rocky River. “The ones busy with development. That was sort of the boom from ’04 through ’08. I saw it go through who aren’t from here are often more excited about it. When you move here from somewhere the downturn, then I saw it rise again, even stronger than before locally. else, you don’t take it for granted.”

Allyson O’Keefe started her legal career eer at Porter Wright in 2004 after completing comple etin ng a sumsumWhen O’Keefe is not working or spending time with her husband and two children, she can mer internship as a Case Western Reserve University law student. Since tthen, hen, she sh he has has WORKED ON there ARE MIXED-USE URBANnPROJECTS. IS MANY OF THE PROJECTS YOU be found volunteering on the boards of nonprofit organizations and watching college football. worked on many significant deals across ss Cleveland, including Flats East Bank, The The THAT AN AREA OF EXPERTISE? Metropolitan at the 9, Uptown in every University and Steelyard Commons, and rsity d has has ha s been be een proproro Yes, definitely. Real estate is extremely interesting because deal Circle is differWHAT INSPIRES YOU ABOUT YOUR WORK? moted to real estate ent. You can never get bored because there’s so partner. much variety there, from tax Just seeing what Cleveland has gone through in the time that I’ve been here, there’s obvious“Young who live downtown so excited about the city,” said O’Keefe, own are O’Keefe e, a credits to historic renovations, from professionals ground-up development to rehab, from ly a lot of excitement around real estate development. I started in 2004 when we were crazy Rive er. “The “T “The ones ones mixed-use to residential. Columbus native who lived downtown for 10 years before moving to Rocky River. busy with development. That was sort of the boom from ’04 through ’08. I saw it go through who aren’t from here are often more excited xcited about it. When you move here from m somewhere som somew ewhere ere the downturn, then I saw it rise again, even stronger than before locally. else, you LEADERSHIP don’t take it for granted.”

YOUR STYLE? HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE

CLEVELAND BUSINESS USINESS

Let the Custom Reprint Department help you leverage this great press.

For more information contact Laura Picariello, Reprints Sales Manager Tel (732) 723-0569 • Fax (888) 299-2205 • lpicariello@crain.com

O’KeefeI expect is not working or spending timeI work, children, she can with her husband and two child dre en, sh he c he an I definitely believe in leadingWhen by example. the people withding whom MANY OF THE PROJECTS YOU WORKED ON ARE MIXED-USE URBAN PROJECTS. IS be found volunteering on the very boards off nonprofit and watching college collle eg ge football. foo fo ottball. my associates, to work hard, and they see me working hard.

For me, it’sorganizations all THAT AN AREA OF EXPERTISE? about working hard and doing good work.

Yes, definitely. Real estate is extremely interesting because every deal is differWHAT INSPIRES YOU ABOUT YOUR WORK? RK? ent. You can never get bored because there’s so much variety there, from tax hrough th here e’s obviousobviousus Just WHAT seeingWAS whatITCleveland has gone the time that I’ve been here, there’s LIKE TO WORK WITHthrough O’KEEFEinON WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING: credits to historic renovations, from ground-up development to rehab, from ly a lot of excitement around real estate te development. I started in 2004 when we we were were e crazy crazy THE FLATS EAST BANK PROJECT? mixed-use to residential. busy with development. of the boom from ’04 through ’08. I saw itt go go through th hrough “Allyson is extremely bright and quick witted, butThat whatwas trulysort distinguishes her the downturn, then I saw itpeople rise again, even from most successful attorneys is her exceptional skills.

Shestronger has an than before locally.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR LEADERSHIP STYLE? uncanny ability to encourage the ‘adversaries’ in her negotiations to work in I definitely believe in leading by example. I expect the people with whom I work, OF THE PROJECTS YOU YOU WORKED Wsaid ORKED ON ON ARE ARE MIXED-USE MIXED-USE URBAN URBAN PROJECTS. PROJECTS. IS IS concert with her to achieve win/win MANY solutions to difficult problems,” my associates, to work hard, and they see me working very hard. For me, it’s all THAT AN AREA EXPERTISE? TISE?of the Scott Wolstein, CEO of Starwood Retail Partners andOF co-developer about working hard and doing good work.

Yes, definitely. Real estate e is extremely interesting because every deal deal is differdifferrFlats East Bank project. ent. You can never get bored there, red because there’s so much variety the ere, ffrom rom m ttax ax — Lee Chilcote WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING: WHAT WAS IT LIKE TO WORK WITH O’KEEFE ON credits to historic renovations, tions, from ground-up development to rehab, re ehab, from fro om THE FLATS EAST BANK PROJECT? mixed-use to residential.

“Allyson is extremely bright and quick witted, but what truly distinguishes her

successfulInc. attorneys is reserved. her exceptional people skills. She has an Reprinted with permission from the Crain's Cleveland Business. © 2015from Crainmost Communications All Rights YOU DESCRIBE RIBE YOUR YOUR LEADERSHIP LEADERSHIP STYLE? STYLE? HOW WOULD ability to encourage the ‘adversaries’ in her negotiations to work in Further duplication without permission is prohibited. Visituncanny www.crainscleveland.com. #CC15040

I definitely believe in leading ding by example. I expect the people with h whom whom m I work, rk concert with her to achieve win/win solutions to difficult problems,” said my associates, to work hard, and they see me working very hard hard. d. For For me, me e, it’s all a Scott Wolstein, CEO of Starwood Retail Partners and co-developer of the about working hard and doing good work.

Flats East Bank project.

— Lee Chilcote YING: WHAT WHAT WAS WAS IT IT LIKE LIKE TO TO WORK WORK WITH WITH O’KEEFE O’KEEFE ON ON WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING: THE FLATS EAST BANK PROJECT? PROJECT? “Allyson is extremely bright right and quick witted, but what truly distinguishes dis stin nguish hes her hes

skills s. She She has has an ha successfulInc. attorneys her exceptional people skills.

Reprinted with permission from the Crain's Cleveland Business. © 2015from Crainmost Communications All Rightsisreserved. ourage negotiatio ons to to work w wo orrk k in n ability to encourage the ‘adversaries’ in her negotiations Further duplication without permission is prohibited. Visituncanny www.crainscleveland.com. #CC15040

hieve win/win solutions to difficult probl bllem ms,” s,” said concert with her to achieve problems,” co-deve evel velo ve elo el ope pe er off the the e Scott Wolstein, CEO off Starwood Retail Partners and co-developer ct.

Flats East Bank project.

— Lee Le Ch Chilcote C

Reprinted with permission from the Crain's Cleveland Business. © 2015 Crain rain Communications nss IInc Inc. nc. nccc. All n Al Rights Rig rese reserved. rved d. ww.crainscleveland. and.c nd d.ccom. o om. m #CC15040 Further duplication without permission is prohibited. Visit www.crainscleveland.com.

Need a customized solution for your business financing?

Create a successful partnership through planning, understanding Partnership is a sound business strategy that delivers many benefits, the top advantages being shared work and financial risk. But despite the potential benefits and best intentions, more than half of business partnerships fail.

The biggest mistake partners can make is not slowing down long enough to come to a complete understanding of expectations, and clearly defining work responsibilities and revenue sharing rules in the beginning.

Your business adviser can help you avoid this misstep and create a successful partnership. Whether you are planning a partnership for two or 20 owners, an operating agreement is a critical piece of the planning process and will be a guide on how to operate the partnership. Don’t bypass this step even if you and your potential partners have been best friends since kinder-

garten. It’s exciting to start or expand a business so you won’t see the problems on the horizon. But when money enters into a relationship, everything can change, including friendship.

A successful partnership can deliver a thriving business. But only if several factors are considered in advance and agreed to in writing. Here’s a checklist to help guide your partnership operating agreement.

How will we capitalize the partnership?

Establish a clear understanding of how your enterprise will be funded, not only initially, but on an ongoing basis. Whether you require partners to make additional capital contributions or not carries different consequences. For example, disparity in capital contributions can affect the way profits and losses are allocated.

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Despite hopes in some circles that the Affordable Care Act would go away under a Republican administration and Congress, its requirements and filing deadlines endure.

The Internal Revenue Service is actively reminding companies of that fact as it begins issuing notices where it sees noncompliance, even assessing penalties in some cases.

After allowing companies a few years to learn and adapt to the requirements of ACA, the IRS began issuing notices in November 2017 about compliance problems for the 2015 calendar year. These notices focused on instances where companies did not meet their obligations with respect to the employer shared-responsibility payments for 2015.

Sometimes referred to as Obamacare, the ACA was enacted in 2010 to provide a means by which more people could obtain affordable health insurance. The law achieved that in part by providing subsidized insurance to eligible consumers, but it also established a number of requirements for employers to share the burden of assuring employees have access to affordable coverage.

Companies with fewer than 50 full-time employees, or the equivalent in some combination of full-time and/or part-time employees, are exempt from penalties, but those companies need to monitor their status closely; passing that threshold and failing to comply can lead to stiff penalties ultimately.

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Scene75 also has a virtual reality arcade, which employs a HTC Vive headset. (Contributed photo)

Variety in regional leisure options should keep the overall concept fresh, added Solomon, whose firm is helping orchestrate the June arrival of Main Event, a 50,000 square-foot Avon-based venue offering bowling, video games and laser tag.

“If guests are happy with the experience in one place, they’re going to want to try the different spinoffs,” Solomon said. “They may be more open to something like Topgolf, where there’s food and drink along with golf.”

In a world of endless diversions, the fun center concept should thrive as long as there’s folks on the hunt for exciting new distractions, Solomon noted.

“It’s too early to tell in some cases, but places like Dave & Buster’s have a long track record,” he said. “Based on the fact that (entertainment venues) continue to grow in different specialties, it seems to be a trend people are interested in checking out.”

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Who will be responsible for the work?

Agree in advance who will be responsible for the day-to-day operations and business functions. Define who, when, and how business decisions will be made.

How will profit and losses be allocated?

This seems simple enough, however, nothing is ever as simple as it seems.

Come to a shared understanding of the basic partnership rules and how your operating agreement dictates the allocation of items to partners. Partnerships are a very flexible form of doing business, but that flexibility can cause frustration when partners don’t agree on these items up front.

How is cash distributed?

You are entering business to make

DeMarco is a senior tax adviser at the accounting and consulting firm of Meaden & Moore.

Companies that exceed the 50-employee standard are considered “applicable large employers,” and they are required to offer employees health coverage or pay a penalty. That’s the employer shared responsibility payment that has become the focus of IRS enforcement notices and penalties.

In addition to providing coverage or paying a penalty, companies also are required to report coverage to the IRS so it can more easily monitor compliance. Those reports first became required under the law in 2016 for the 2015 tax year.

The IRS has indicated it plans to issue more letters with assessments for lapses that occurred in 2016.

Business owners who have not kept up with their ACA obligations should

money. Understanding how and when the partnership will distribute cash should be a prime interest.

Many times a new business will want to leave as much in the business as possible, but make distributions for the partners to pay the tax on any income. This is an important expectation to set early so all partners understand when and how much cash will be available to them.

Can I just use the boilerplate template I found on the web?

Your needs may change over time.

In that case you can amend the agreement to change some of the terms. Decide up front what’s required to amend the agreement.

You could do this, however, it isn’t ideal. Boilerplate agreements may not structure your particular partnership properly to avoid unwanted consequences. For example, unknown tax code regulations could result in a higher tax liability than expected. It is critical to have your attorney draft the agreement or review the language to consider the impact of all the provisions.

Also your tax adviser should review the tax provisions to make sure that you properly consider any effect on your personal tax situation.

The more clearly defined your expectations, the more likely your partnership will be successful. Additional important factors to consider are the communication style and work ethic of your potential partners. Successful partners have open communication, even when it’s bad news, and a common work ethic.

And despite the best planning, partnerships sometimes just don’t work out. That’s why it’s so important to define an exit agreement that will not hurt the company’s future operation and success.

know that assessments can be significant, ranging from thousands to millions of dollars.

The 50-employee threshold is carefully defined in the law to mean 50 employees or full-time employee equivalents working an average of 30 hours a week or 130 hours a month.

There are additional technicalities that suggest even employers with fewer than 50 individuals they would identify as full-time employees might still be subject to the requirement.

The employers subject to the requirement can be held liable for failing to meet the employer shared responsibility if they fail to offer minimum essential coverage, or coverage that is deemed unaffordable or does not provide minimum value. They might be found liable if such a situation prompts even one full-time employee to seek coverage through the federally subsided health insurance exchange, which was also created under the law.

Penalties for failure to offer adequate coverage can be computed by factoring the number of full-time employees for a given year, minus 30, by $2,000, which is adjusted each

year for inflation. In 2015, for example, if an employer with 75 employees failed to meet the requirement, the assessed penalty could be $90,000 (40 employees, minus 30, times $2,000).

In addition to offering adequate coverage, employers are required to file some specific forms with the IRS to report whether they have offered coverage that complies with the minimum requirement. The filing requirement is as important as the coverage itself, under the rules. Companies that provide the coverage but fail to file can also be assessed penalties.

Employers who receive an assessment letter from the IRS can elect to simply pay the assessment or to request an extension of time. Employers who object to the assessment can also appeal by including a signed statement with the proper form explaining the disagreement.

While the IRS gave companies some time to get familiar with the health care reform requirements, it’s clear that the sun is setting on the learning period and federal authorities are seeking full compliance.

What’s the exit strategy?

It’s important to plan the ending at the beginning. Suppose a partner decides to leave, dies, or is reaching retirement age. Does he or she have the right to sell or give their interest to whomever they want? Do the remaining partners want to have control over that decision? Planning ahead for how you want to wrap up or even continue the business can eliminate many disagreements down the road and protect the business.

What if our agreement no longer meets our needs?

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Philpott Solutions Group is shutting down operations in China and bringing them back to its new Aurora facility. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re bringing those jobs back,â&#x20AC;? president and CEO Mike Baach said.

Philpott, which has another site in Brunswick, had a footprint near Shanghai, partnering with local companies making small parts for its rubber line, he said.

But the company will be shifting those operations back to the U.S., with a goal of mid-year to September for completion, said James Vaughn, Philpottâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s chief operating officer.

Though the total number of jobs was not disclosed, Baach said the amount is, for Philpott, â&#x20AC;&#x153;significant.â&#x20AC;?

A maker of custom plastic and rubber parts, Philpott purchased the Aurora facility in September 2016 and went through a six-month renovation project to make it suitable for the company, said Greg Stafford, vice president of technology and business development. Those renovations brought the building space up to about 43,000 square feet, with about 40,000 square feet of that as manufacturing space. Once that job was complete, Philpott moved equipment from some leased space in Stow toward the end of March 2017.

Making the shift back to the U.S. is not a project taken on lightly. Though Philpott has worked with Chinese partner companies in the past to reach particular price requirements for jobs, it came down to an issue of quality.

Baach said part of the issue was

H O EL V D ER !

Contact Lisa Rudy â&#x20AC;˘ lrudy@crain.com

that Philpott didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have the scale to make working with Chinese partners viable, but the company needed reliable products and control. Though Philpottâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Chinese partners were well-intentioned, the results couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be counted on.

Now Philpott is sticking to its core competencies by focusing on jobs here and moving all three of its production lines to Aurora.

The company has gotten its plastic injection and urethane molding lines online at the Aurora facility and is in the process of moving over its rubber compression molding line, Vaughn said. Philpott focuses on the energy, steel, rubber, plastics and urethane markets.

The company already has invested in a new injection molding machine and is running with a capital expenditure in the range of $500,000 to $1 million at this point, Vaughn said.

Stafford said the new rubber equipment began to arrive around May 2017 and has taken about a year to get in place and operating.

As the Aurora location expands, the Brunswick location will remain the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s warehouse, Vaughn said.

Vaughn said the company is right on the edge of production for its lines to consider adding a second shift. The Aurora facility includes significant room for buildout, and the company will add more equipment and employees to run three full shifts before the end of the year. The company currently has fewer than 100 employees.

Brown is a reporter for Rubber & Plastics News, a sister publication of Crainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cleveland Business.

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graduate@bw.edu

n

bw.edu/mba

Online Options The Management MBA is also offered in an online, hybrid format for students who find it difficult to commit to weekly attendance on campus, due to scheduling conflicts and distance. Most coursework is completed online, and students come to campus for only seven weekends in the course of the twoyear program. The hybrid program is consistently ranked among the best online business graduate programs

by U.S. News & World Report.

SIZE OF MBA PROGRAMS 350 MBA students are enrolled in 2017-18.

Types of MBAs Available More than 6,500 Baldwin Wallace MBA graduates work and lead in Northeast Ohio. They serve many different kinds of organizations — from small startups to Fortune 500 companies to nonprofit organizations. They have benefited from an MBA faculty composed of expert scholars and corporate executives who can provide business theory as well as real-world application. BW’s part-time class offerings make the program ideal for experienced, working professionals.

Its full-time, one-year programs can help to launch the careers of recent college graduates of any major. The MBA in Management takes a systems approach to the business enterprise.

Students can choose to focus on a

particular area: Analytics, Human Resources or International Business.

In addition, BW offers two full-time programs. The One-Year MBA, for recent business graduates, is a three-semester program that includes a two-week trip to China to study culture and business. The Master in Management, another yearlong program, is for students who studied arts and sciences as an undergraduate and includes an internship designed

to provide skills for success in any type of organization.

Class Locations Day, evening and Saturday classes are offered in Berea. BW’s health care MBA classes, offered both in Berea and at Corporate College East in Warrensville Heights, meet every other weekend so they do not interfere with the professional’s workday schedule.

Requirements for Admission Interested students are encouraged to schedule a personal advising session with a program director. They can apply online and are required to submit academic transcripts for a bachelor’s degree, two letters of recommendation, and GMAT or GRE scores. The test score requirement is waived for applicants with a cumulative undergraduate GPA of

WHAT’S NEW BW’s newest graduate business offering is the Master of Accountancy, which integrates Becker CPA Review Course materials directly into its curriculum. The 30-credit program is offered as a twosemester cohort program and as a part-time program for working professionals.

3.0 or better, or applicants who hold another graduate degree.

General Tuition/ Fee Information Tuition varies by program. A limited number of scholarships, federal student loans, a monthly payment plan and/or tuition reimbursement are available. More information is available at bw.edu/mba.

MORE THAN AN MBA

A CAREER CATALYST Baldwin Wallace University's broad “systems approach” takes a 360° view of modern business, providing insight to all facets of the enterprise and preparing you to meet Baldwin Wallace University School of Business 275 Eastland Road Berea, Ohio 44017 440.826.2392 www.bw.edu/mba

today's challenges—and tomorrow’s.

Learn how a BW MBA can develop your personal expertise,expand your network and accelerate your career at www.bw.edu/mba.

Baldwin Wallace does not discriminate on the basis of race, creed, age, disability, national origin, gender or sexual orientation in the administration of any policies or programs.

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CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY Weatherhead School of Management Cleveland

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216-368-2030

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julie.dibiasio@case.edu

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weatherhead.case.edu/degrees

scholarships are awarded for specific programs.

SIZE OF MBA PROGRAMS

General Tuition/ Fee Information

108 full-time MBA students, 170 part-time MBA students and 74 Executive MBA students are enrolled in 2017-18.

Tuition for the full-time MBA class entering in the fall of 2018 is $40,560 per year for the two-year program.

Accolades

Types of MBAs Available The university offers full-time, part-time and Executive MBA programs, as well as an education track for health care professionals in partnership with the Cleveland Clinic. Weatherhead also offers nine dual-degree master’s programs to enhance management expertise and leadership potential in a variety of sectors alongside the full-time MBA. Each format provides a cohort experience to maximize learning outcomes and build lasting relationships beyond transactional networking. At Weatherhead, great emphasis is placed on developing

leaders to advance business and society.

Requirements for Admission

Class Location

Applicants should submit a completed online application form, two essays, a current résumé, transcripts, GMAT or GRE scores (part-time and full-time MBA applicants) and letters of recommendation.

The Weatherhead School of Management is located at the Peter B. Lewis Building on Case Western Reserve University’s campus in Cleveland’s historic University Circle neighborhood.

The university is close to many museums, cultural institutions, restaurants, religious organizations and academic centers, as well as the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals.

Scholarship/ Financial Aid Available Financial aid is available through the Office of Financial Aid. Merit-based

Weatherhead’s part-time and fulltime MBA rankings increased in 2017 in U.S. News & World Report.

Weatherhead’s part-time MBA is nationally ranked No. 30, while the full-time MBA is nationally ranked No. 55. Distinguished alumni serve as executive leaders at organizations with national and global footprints such as Amazon, Federal Reserve Bank, Swagelok, McKinsey & Co., Progressive, Deloitte, Boston Private Financial Holdings, Fairmount Santrol, KeyBank, Moen, Ernst & Young, Cleveland Clinic, BrandMuscle, Lyft, Goodyear and Delphi Technologies.

MBA PROGRAM

HIGHLIGHTS

Weatherhead is home to many of the business concepts practiced around the world, including Appreciative Inquiry, Emotional Intelligence, Manage by Designing and Flourishing Enterprise.

Students can participate in City Treks to influential areas such as Silicon Valley and Wall Street to connect with Fortune 500 companies, top business leaders and prominent alumni.

The MBA program encompasses small class sizes to empower one-on-one interaction with academic pioneers and industry leaders. Students partner with faculty and staff to draft a personalized learning plan that combines core curriculum with electives that comprise almost half of the program.

Propel your career forward with an MBA from the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. The Weatherhead experience is designed to give you a professional edge with: • Faculty who’ve pioneered revolutionary business practices • Engaged alumni working at corporations like Google, KeyBank and Amazon • Nearly 90% job placement rates for those seeking employment after graduation

Learn how you can change the world through business at weatherhead.case.edu.

F U L L-T I M E M B A

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PA R T-T I M E M B A

|

EXECUTIVE MBA

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CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY

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Monte Ahuja College of Business

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Cleveland

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216-687-3730

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cbacsu@csuohio.edu

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csuohio.edu/business/academics/master-business-administration

admissions requirements can be found at csuohio.edu/graduateadmissions/admission-requirements.

SIZE OF MBA PROGRAMS The size is dependent upon the cohort/MBA program.

Scholarship/ Financial Aid Available The Monte Ahuja College of Business offers a number of scholarships for graduate students as well as graduate assistantships. Financial aid is offered through our main Financial Aid office.

Types of MBAs Available The Monte Ahuja College of Business offers a world-class MBA degree. All of the university’s programs are accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Accessible and affordable, MBA options are designed to accommodate a student’s work schedule and lifestyle. Options include: Executive MBA (19 months); Online Accelerated MBA (12 months); Health Care Administration MBA; full-time and part-time MBAs; the Juris Doctor — MBA program (with the Cleveland — Marshall College of Law); and the new BBA 2 MBA program for recent Cleveland State University alumni.

Class Location Classes are held on the Cleveland

General Tuition/ Fee Information State University campus, located downtown next to Playhouse Square and online.

Online Options The Cleveland State University Online Accelerated MBA program was one of the first AACSB-accredited, fully online programs within the U.S. Ideal for those for with a business undergraduate degree, the program

features all-inclusive tuition. In addition to the accelerated program, many graduate-level courses are offered online each semester.

Requirements for Admission Admission requirements are similar to that of the Graduate College at Cleveland State University. With the exception of the BBA 2 MBA program,

The all-inclusive tuition for the Executive MBA is $49,900 and includes an international study experience.

The Online Accelerated program is $35,000. Tuition and fees for all other MBA programs can be found online at csuohio.edu/ treasury-services/tuition-and-fees/.

Accolades The Online Accelerated MBA program is ranked No. 31 in the world by CEO Magazine. CEO Magazine ranked

MBA PROGRAM

HIGHLIGHTS

There is all-inclusive tuition for the Executive and Online Accelerated MBA programs.

The Health Care Administration MBA includes an experiential component of working within a health care setting. The Online Accelerated MBA program is completely online and one of the first AACSB-accredited online MBA programs. the MBA programs as Tier One for the second year in a row. The Monte Ahuja College of Business was recognized as one of the Best Business Colleges for Vets by Military Times.

All MBA programs are accredited by AACSB. Fewer than 5% of the world’s business schools or colleges of business hold this accreditation. About 80% of traditional MBA alumni live and work in Northeast Ohio.

MONTE AHUJA COLLEGE of BUSINESS

At Cleveland State University we have an MBA to fit

your schedule, lifestyle and experience level.

TAKE CONTROL

OF YOUR CAREER S MBA PROGRAM

Our dedicated graduate advisors will work with you to choose the program that best helps

YOU achieve

your career aspirations.

EXECUTIVE MBA / ONE YEAR ONLINE ACCELERATED MBA / HEALTH CARE ADMINISTRATION MBA JD/MBA PROGRAM / FULL-TIME OR PART-TIME OPTIONS / IN-PERSON AND ONLINE CLASSES

visit THECSUMBA.COM for MORE INFORMATION and TO APPLY

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INDIANA WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY Independence

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866-498-4968

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iwuenroll@indwes.edu

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indwes.edu/adult-graduate/programs/mba/

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Online Options

SIZE OF MBA PROGRAMS

37 students are enrolled in the Independence-based program in 2017-18. There are 999 students enrolled online and across all education centers.

Types of MBAs Available IWU — National & Global offers four MBA specializations in Health Care Administration, Personal Financial Planning, Project Management and School Administration. IWU also offers a track to help students earn their MBA faster through the Associate to MBA program, which bypasses a bachelor’s degree.

MBA PROGRAM

Multiple start dates are available throughout the year for the online MBA programs, which can be accessed by students from wherever they are located.

HIGHLIGHTS

Requirements for Admission

Students interested in starting an MBA program at IWU–National & Global must have earned a bachelor’s or master’s degree from an accredited college or university and have an undergraduate GPA of 2.5 or higher.

Learn more about admission requirements at indwes.edu/adultgraduate/programs/mba.

Class Locations

Scholarship/ Financial Aid Available

MBA classes are offered both online and onsite at select education centers across Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky.

IWU — National & Global students are encouraged to apply for a variety of financial aid options, including grants, scholarships, loans and

veteran benefits. The university will help students find financial aid options that work best for them and their personal needs and goals.

General Tuition/ Fee Information Tuition information can be located at indwes.edu/adult-graduate/ programs/mba. Current tuition for

the MBA program is $562 per credit hour, not including fees and the cost of textbooks. IWU reserves the right to change any of the rules or regulations of the university at any time, including but not limited to tuition costs.

Accolades The MBA program from the DeVoe

The MBA program is designed to help students advance in their careers. The MBA combines academic excellence and real-world strategies for a dynamic and relevant educational experience. IWU offers learning format options that range from online to onsite at one of its regional education centers. IWU offers multiple MBAs. To learn more about the options, visit indwes. edu/online.

School of Business is one of the most sought-after programs at Indiana Wesleyan University because of its flexible learning format, small classes and online tutoring services. It also does not require the GRE or GMAT for admission.

ONLINE BUSINESS PROGRAMS

CLEVELAND EDUCATION CENTER

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ASSOCIATE TO MBA 66 CREDIT HOURS.

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MBA 42 CREDIT HOURS.

EARN A MASTER’S DEGREE IN 33 MONTHS

COMPLETE YOUR DEGREE IN 18-26 MONTHS

4100 ROCKSIDE ROAD | INDEPENDENCE, OH 44131

IWUeducation.com | 866.498.4968

MBA SPECIALIZATIONS H E A LT H C A R E A D M I N I S T R A T I O N • P E R S O N A L F I N A N C I A L P L A N N I N G PROJECT MANAGEMENT • SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION

INDIANA WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY

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NATIONAL & GLOBAL

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JOHN CARROLL UNIVERSITY Boler School of Business University Heights

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216-397-1970

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ktibbs@jcu.edu

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go.jcu.edu/mbaguide

more years of full-time professional work experience. Students who apply to the part-time Boler MBA program may request a GMAT/GRE waiver based on a variety of criteria.

An admission interview may also be required. The Admissions Committee reserves the right to request a standardized test score (GMAT or GRE) from any applicant.

SIZE OF MBA PROGRAMS 65 full-time MBA students and 50 part-time MBA students are enrolled in 2017-18.

Types of MBAs Available The university offers a full-time MBA and a part-time professional MBA. The full-time MBA is uniquely structured for recent graduates, allowing students to complete an MBA in 12 months, dependent upon classes taken at the undergraduate level. The part-time professional MBA is a two-year cohort program that features live projects, team-taught core courses, a leadership sequence and exposure to leading Cleveland executives.

Class Location Classes are held at the Boler

Scholarship/ Financial Aid Available All students who apply to the full-time or part-time Boler MBA programs are automatically considered for merit scholarships.

No separate application is needed.

School of Business at John Carroll University in University Heights. Both the part-time professional and fulltime MBA programs offer convenient evening options.

Online Options The university does not offer online MBA options.

Requirements for Admission The full-time and part-time professional MBAs require an undergraduate degree from an accredited institution with a minimum GPA of 2.8. The part-time professional MBA requires an additional two or

Lead

and Innovate Are you ready to take the next step, and assume a leadership role in your organization or community?

We welcome you and a diverse group of like-minded professionals to the Boler School of Business at John Carroll University.

Our Part-Time Professional and Full-Time MBA programs focus on leadership, innovation, experiential learning, and connecting you to the Cleveland business community. You’ll go to class at night, and put your skills into practice at work the next day.

Learn more at go.jcu.edu/crainsmba Phone: 216.397.1970 Email: gradbusiness@jcu.edu

General Tuition/ Fee Information The tuition rate is $900 per credit hour. The tuition for the 33-credit hour part-time Boler MBA program is $29,700. The tuition for the 30-credit hour full-time Boler MBA program is $27,000.

WHAT’S NEW The part-time professional MBA program was ranked No. 111 nationally, No. 7 among Ohio universities and No. 3 among private universities in the state, according to U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Business Schools 2019” guide. The program’s ranking marked a significant increase from No. 177 in the 2018 rankings. John Carroll’s MBA programs are wellrespected in the community and in the region, where more than 700 Northeast Ohio businesses are owned or led by John Carroll University alumni.

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KENT STATE UNIVERSITY

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College Of Business Administration

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Kent

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330-672-2282

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gradbus@kent.edu

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kent.edu/business

$830 per credit hour, less than $30,000 total for the program, for both in-state and out-of-state students. The Executive MBA program is $43,900 and includes tuition, residency program, 10-day international business trip, meals and refreshments, parking, professional development and career coaching.

SIZE OF MBA PROGRAMS 165 MBA students enrolled in 2017-18.

Types of MBAs Available Kent State offers a Full-Time MBA, Online MBA and Executive MBA. Five dual-degree MBA programs are available in Architecture, Nursing, Library Science, Translation and Communication.

Accolades

International Business and Supply Chain Management are optional concentrations in the online program.

for the Full-Time or Online MBA programs. Interested individuals should submit an online application, along with a résumé, transcripts, GMAT or GRE scores and letters of recommendation. A minimum seven years of work experience is required for the Executive MBA program, and the GMAT/GRE is typically waived.

Requirements for Admission

Scholarship/ Financial Aid Available

Class Location Kent Campus and online.

Online Options

No work experience is required

Tuition scholarships are available

for Full-Time and Executive MBA students. Study abroad scholarships are available for FullTime and Online MBA students.

General Tuition/ Fee Information The cost to students breaks down as follows: The Full-Time MBA program is $515 per credit hour in-state or $6,255 per semester, and $928 per credit hour out-of-state or $10,798 per semester. The Online MBA is

The College of Business Administration at Kent State University is accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International for business and accounting and recognized by Princeton Review as a Best Business School.

The college is among fewer than 1% of business schools worldwide to achieve dual AACSB accreditation in both business and accounting, and one of only 64 business schools in the world to have received dual AACSB accreditation with a Ph.D. program in business. The Executive MBA program at Kent State is ranked Tier 1 globally by CEO Magazine.

MBA PROGRAM

HIGHLIGHTS

The Full-Time MBA can be completed in 12 months. Scholarships and graduate assistantships are available. A study abroad option with scholarships is available. No work experience or prior business degree required. The Online MBA is ideal for working professionals. It is structured as a modular, self-paced program that can be completed in 12 months. A study abroad option with scholarships is available. No work experience or prior business degree is required. The Executive MBA includes a 10-day international business trip. Countries previously visited include Brazil, China and Italy. The program meets in-person one weekend a month and is supplemented with online content.

The summer session is 100% online. No prior business degree is required, and GMAT/GRE scores are typically waived.

A B M E T A T S T N E K nized

y Recog l l a b o l ked • G n a R y l l Nationa

ONLINE MBA

FULL-TIME MBA

EXECUTIVE MBA • Tuition includes a 10-day international business trip, Residency Program, career coaching, meals and parking • Meets in-person one weekend a month, supplemented with online content • Summer session 100% online • Prior business degree not required

• Accelerated program, can complete in 12 months • Scholarships and graduate assistantships available • Study abroad options with scholarships available • No work experience or prior business degree required

• Ideal for working professionals — modular, self-paced program • Finish in as few as 12 months • International Business and Supply Chain Management concentrations available • Study abroad options with scholarships available • No work experience or prior business degree required

kent.edu/business/infosessions

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LAKE ERIE COLLEGE School of Business Painesville

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440-375-7075

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dbird@lec.edu

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lec.edu/parkermba

Class Locations

SIZE OF MBA PROGRAMS 152 MBA students are enrolled in 2017-18.

Types of MBAs Available Lake Erie College offers a Professional MBA, an Accelerated MBA and an Online MBA. The Professional MBA program is designed for students with current or previous work experience, and classes are held on weekday evenings. The Accelerated MBA requires significant professional work experience and strong academic records. Students admitted to the Accelerated MBA track can earn the MBA degree in 11 months by attending classes for full days on Saturdays. LEC also offers the full Parker MBA program 100% online, allowing greater flexibility of scheduling for current and prospective students.

personal statement of up to 500 words (topics found online with application).

To accommodate the need for the latest technology, flexibility and convenience of educational opportunities, Lake Erie College’s MBA classes are offered at two convenient locations. The east side location is at Holden University Center of Lakeland Community College in Kirtland. The west side location is at the University Center Building at Lorain County Community College in Lorain.

Online Options Lake Erie College offers the Professional MBA program 100% online.

Student enrolled in the Professional or Accelerated MBA may also supplement their face-to-face courses with online courses as desired.

Requirements for Admission Admission to the Parker MBA program is determined on the basis of demonstrated professionalism,

Scholarship/ Financial Aid Available Students who complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) may be eligible for graduate student loan programs. Lake Erie College’s FAFSA Code is 003066.

intellectual capability for successful completion of the program and the potential for leadership. Students may be admitted and begin the MBA program during spring, summer or fall semester. Criteria for admission to LEC’s MBA program includes a bachelor’s degree from an accredited four-year college or university, submission of official transcripts, and a completed MBA application available at lec.edu/ parkermba. Applicants must also submit a current résumé and a

General Tuition/ Fee Information Lake Erie College Parker MBA tuition and fees for the 2018-19 academic year are $698 per credit hour. The program requires 36 total credit hours, which consists of nine required courses and three electives.

Accolades The Parker MBA program is accredited by the International Assembly for College Business Education (IACBE). Fewer than 10% of business programs have achieved

WHAT’S NEW Lake Erie College now offers the Professional MBA 100% online.

Lake Erie College has partnered with Lorain County Community College and its University Partnership to offer the Parker MBA program to professionals on the west side. LEC’s MBA program is available in the University Center Building on LCCC’s campus.

LCCC is the first community college in Ohio to have a University Partnership program and offers 50 different bachelor’s and master’s degrees, including programs in Computer Science and Engineering, Business, Biology, Education and Accounting. Visit lorainccc.edu/UP for more information. the quality assurance that IACBE accreditation provides.

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THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

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Max M. Fisher College of Business

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Columbus

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SIZE OF MBA PROGRAMS

183 full-time MBA students and 365 part-time MBA students are enrolled in 2017-18.

Types of MBAs Available The MBA provides flexibility through top-ranked program offerings.

Programs include a full-time MBA, MBA for Working Professionals (evening and/or weekend), dual degrees and Executive MBA.

Class Location Columbus is the largest and fastestgrowing city in Ohio, where historic neighborhoods intersect with vibrant fashion, music and entertainment scenes. It’s a center for technology, health care, global enterprises and business incubators, with a diversity of lifestyles and opportunities.

614-292-8511

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mba@fisher.osu.edu

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fisher.osu.edu/graduate

Requirements for Admission

grants, scholarships and assistantships to the most deserving students. Instate tuition opportunities are available for qualified students, including Forever Buckeye, Ohio GI Promise and more.

The MBA Admissions Committee looks for well-rounded students. Individuals who have had diverse and stimulating life experiences who will add value to their classmates and to the Fisher community in meaningful ways are of particular interest. Applicants must submit an online application, transcript(s), GRE or GMAT scores (GMAT/GRE waiver available for part-time MBA program), written essay, a résumé, video interview and letters of recommendation (optional for full-time MBA). Fisher strongly prefers applicants with prior work experience and/or proven leadership ability.

awards, professional development grants, entrepreneurship scholarships, diversity scholarships, National Black MBA Association scholarships, international scholarships, military/veteran scholarships, dean’s scholarships for alumnus/alumna and geographic/buckeye border state scholarships.

Scholarship/ Financial Aid Available

General Tuition/ Fee Information

Financial assistance available includes fellowships, graduate assistant positions, academic

Ohio State’s tuition and fees are consistently the lowest in the Big Ten. Fisher offers generous

Accolades Fisher College of Business is among those top-ranked MBA programs accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. U.S. News & World Report ranks the full-time MBA program No. 31 and the parttime MBA for Working Professionals No. 9 in the nation. Fisher also is a proud partner of the Forté Foundation, NBMBAA, Prospanica, GMAC (Military Friendly School), Reaching Out MBA and more. MBA students also benefit from the large Fisher alumni network. There are currently 76,000-plus Fisher alumni living in 100 countries and 500,000-plus Ohio State alumni.

MBA PROGRAM

HIGHLIGHTS

The Individualized MBA with Global Experiences enables Fisher MBA students to personalize their curriculum with advice and coaching from a dedicated team of Fisher staff.

Students can chart a path toward their unique career goals through 10 optional majors or an extensive array of elective courses at Fisher and across The Ohio State University. Experiential learning and leadership are at the heart of every Fisher MBA. The exclusive Global Applied Projects (GAP) and Global Business Expeditions (GBE) put classroom theories into action in compelling international locations. Students face real-life consulting initiatives with organizations facing real challenges in the corporate, nonprofit and governmental sectors.

PART-TIME MBA

An unmatched MBA

#1 in Ohio, top 10 in the nation WI-FI ENABLED BUS SERVICE FROM CLEVELAND WEEKEND FLEXIBILITY FOR WORKING PROFESSIONALS

An MBA with flexibility for working professionals. Take classes in the evening, on the weekend, or both.

fisher.osu.edu/wpmba

FULL-TIME MBA Fisher’s MBA prepares tomorrow’s leaders for career success. Explore our top ranked program.

fisher.osu.edu/ftmba

ONE-ON-ONE CAREER MANAGEMENT PERSONALIZED ADVICE AND COACHING

go.osu.edu/fishermba RANKING: 2019 U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT PART-TIME MBA PROGRAM

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THE UNIVERSITY OF AKRON

College of Business Administration Akron

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330-972-7043

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gradcba@uakron.edu

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gradbusiness.uakron.edu

WHAT’S NEW

SIZE OF MBA PROGRAMS 315 students are enrolled in 2017-18.

Beginning in fall 2018, the Saturday MBA program will be offered on the UA main campus. The program is designed to give working professionals the critical business knowledge, skills and experience they need to enhance their career in a convenient and accessible format.

Types of MBAs Available The University of Akron College of Business Administration offers a flexible MBA with full-time and part-time options. The university also offers a two-year Saturday MBA program. Concentrations are available in areas that include Business Analytics, Finance, Global Technological Innovation, Health Care Management, International Business, Management, Strategic Marketing and Supply Chain Management.

Class Location Courses are held at the main campus in Akron and online.

Online Options All MBA required courses may be

offered online. Electives are in-person only.

Requirements for Admission Requirements include an online graduate application, acceptable GMAT, GRE or LSAT exam scores, two reference letters, résumé, statement of purpose and transcripts

from all programs attended.

Scholarship/ Financial Aid Available Student loans and limited scholarships are available.

General Tuition/ Fee Information The Saturday MBA is $33,000. The

fees for the flexible MBA program are $465 per credit for in-state students and $765 per credit for out-of-state students. The flexible program is 36 to 51 credits.

Accolades U.S. News & World Report has ranked UA’s MBA program as among the best part-time MBA programs in the U.S.

CEO Magazine has ranked the UA MBA as a Tier 1 program based on program quality and student success.

The College of Business Administration is accredited in business and has an additional, specialized accreditation in accounting by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International. Fewer than 5% of business schools in the world have attained AACSB accreditation.

GET YOUR MBA. KEEP YOUR LIFESTYLE.

Earn a fully accredited MBA in just two years by attending class every other Saturday at UA’s main campus. Call 330-972-7043, email saturdayMBA@uakron.edu or visit uakron.edu/SaturdayMBA.

The Saturday MBA program is designed for the working professional.

UA has the highest-ranked part-time MBA program at a public university in northeast Ohio, according to the 2019 U.S. News and World Report ranking of part-time MBA programs.

The University of Akron is an Equal Education and Employment Institution - uakron.edu/eeo

•

Two years (six semesters) – one course at a time – to graduation

•

Cohort format – students start and graduate together

•

Free parking and lunch provided

•

Great networking opportunities

•

Outstanding faculty

•

Fully AACSB accredited

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UNIVERSITY OF TOLEDO

LIC

College of Business and Innovation

PUB

Toledo

n

419-530-5680

SIZE OF MBA PROGRAMS 490 MBA and EMBA students are enrolled in 2017-18.

n

kelly.barger@utoledo.edu

n

utoledo.edu/business/graduate/

offers various courses both in class, as well as online. Certain courses also are offered in a hybrid format, in which much of the coursework is studied both online and in class.

credit hour for out-ofstate and international students.

Accolades

Types of MBAs Available Requirements The university offers an Executive for Admission MBA program to individuals with significant and progressive work experience. This is an accelerated 12-month program, in which students meet in an on-campus class one weekend per month. The Professional MBA enables students to take classes at their own pace in a variety of formats with multiple specializations.

Class Locations EMBA Courses are located in Stranahan Hall, and Professional MBA classes are held in the Savage & Associates Complex for Business.

Applicants should have an undergraduate GPA of 2.7 or higher on a 4.0 scale; a GMAT composite score of 450 or higher; leadership potential demonstrated through work experience, community service or research projects; a typed Statement of Purpose; and at least one letter of recommendation. International applicants are required to submit TOEFL test results.

Online Options

Scholarship/ Financial Aid Available

The Professional MBA program

Graduate assistantship opportunities

What a Difference a Year Makes!

are available. Students can apply for work through UT, where tuition is covered on a full-time basis and a small stipend is available.

General Tuition/ Fee Information EMBA tuition is $43,350 for the whole program, including all fees and expenses. Professional MBA tuition rates are $537.40 per credit hour for in-state students, and $983.28 per

The College of Business and Innovation offers various degree programs with value and flexibility that help students expand their skills and their career.

The MBA program is accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International. Fewer than 5% of the world’s business schools or colleges of business hold this accreditation. U.S. News & World Report recently recognized UT for its long history of delivering a quality education through distance education, and ranked it No. 42 for student engagement and accreditation. The graduate program also has a student placement rate of over 90% upon completion of the MBA/ EMBA program.

WHAT’S NEW The University of Toledo College of Business and Innovation’s newest facility is the Savage & Associates Business Complex, which offers state-of-the-art technological resources for MBA students. Features include the PNC Entrepreneurship Lab and the John B. and Lillian E. Neff trading room, in which students manage a real $1 million investment fund utilizing Bloomberg terminals commonly used by major trading firms on Wall Street.

The complex also features the Alan Barry Accounting Lab, which offers computer software, hosts guest speakers, tutoring sessions and workshops to help prepare students for the CPA and CMA exams.

Give yourself the competitive edge with an Executive MBA from The University of Toledo College of Business and Innovation.

E X ECU TIV E MBA AT A GL A NCE: • Intense, 12-month program with remarkable return on investment

• Establishes lifelong networks and community ties

• Welcomes students regardless of undergraduate major without additional coursework

• Promotes global business environment with international study trip

• Capable executive coaches and faculty transform your professional and personal goals • Fosters leadership skills and business acumen necessary for promotion and new business establishment

• Flexible special topics electives increase your exposure to current technology, issues and trends to better prepare you for real-world application • Competitive tuition that includes all course materials, meals while on campus and the international study trip.

Program begins in September. Invest in yourself and advance your career.

Email the COBI Graduate Programs Office at COBIGradPrograms@utoledo.edu or call 419.530.5680 to begin your application.

T H E COBI BR A N D: BA 1281

INSPIRE. TRANSFORM. EMPOWER. ACHIEVE.

BA 1281 EMBA_Crains Cleveland print ad.indd 1

utoledo.edu/business

4/11/18 9:28 AM

OHIO MBA GUIDE

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LIC

YOUNGSTOWN STATE UNIVERSITY

Williamson College of Business Administration Youngstown

n

330-941-3069

n

mba@ysu.edu

n

mba.ysu.edu

applications are evaluated based on a combination of professional experience and undergraduate GPA). To apply online for graduate admission, visit ysu. edu/gradcollege.

Application requirements include application fee, résumé, letter of intent, official transcripts and GMAT/GRE (or apply for waiver).

SIZE OF MBA PROGRAMS 160 MBA students are enrolled in 2017-18.

Types of MBAs Available The MBA program at Youngstown State University is designed to meet the needs of working professionals. It aims to create value through instilling knowledge that enables students to succeed not only in the classroom, but more importantly, in their current responsibilities, workplace and beyond. Students can earn their MBA in less than two years. This is facilitated by the program’s unique design. Each of the 20 courses (40 credits total) is delivered in a business-friendly, concentrated format over eight weeks.

Class Location Students can earn their MBA on campus in Youngstown or entirely online.

Online Options The MBA program can be completed fully online. Led by full-time faculty or professionals with extensive business experience, courses provide students access to those with the experience and insights to help them succeed, wherever they may be.

Requirements for Admission GMAT/GRE waivers are available.

Admission values the experience of working professionals. Individuals with full-time, professional experience can apply for a GMAT waiver for admission (waiver

Scholarship/ Financial Aid Available Scholarships totaling $3,000 to $6,000 are awarded to those with outstanding undergraduate performance (GPA of 3.5 or above).

The scholarship is between $500 and $1,000 per semester, and is renewable for up to six consecutive

MBA PROGRAM

HIGHLIGHTS

Students can earn their MBA in less than two years. This is facilitated by the program’s unique design. Each of the 20 courses (40 credits total) is delivered in a businessfriendly, concentrated format over eight weeks. semesters, provided the student maintains a 3.0 graduate GPA and completes a minimum of six semester hours of graduate courses each semester.

Accolades The Williamson MBA program is accredited by Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International — the mark of excellence that fewer than 5% of all business schools worldwide have earned.

OHIO MBA GUIDE

S14 May 21, 2018

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OHI

O

MBADirectory PRIVATE

PRIVATE

BLUFFTON UNIVERSITY ASHLAND UNIVERSITY Dauch College of Business & Economics Ashland 419-289-5214 mba.ashland.edu

MBA Program Highlights: Part-time or full-time in evening, weekend, online or hybrid format. One-year accelerated MBA with Saturday classes and two international study tours available.

Concentrations available in 11 areas including Accounting, Business Analytics, Entrepreneurship, Global Management, Management Information Systems and Sport Management.

Class Locations: Ashland, Independence or Columbus. The accelerated weekend option is only available in Columbus and Independence.

Online: The online MBA can be completed in one year. Part-time students typically complete the program within two years.

FOR MORE INFORMATION SEE S2

PRIVATE

BALDWIN WALLACE UNIVERSITY School of Business Berea 440-826-2392 bw.edu/mba

MBA Program Highlights: Flexible weeknight, weekend and hybrid format available. Programs include Analytics, Entrepreneurship, Health Care, Human Resources, International and Management. A full-time, one-year MBA for recent business graduates and a oneyear Master’s in Management for recent liberal arts grads are available. A Master of Accountancy, which includes Becker CPA prep, is offered full or part time.

Class Locations: Berea. Health Care MBA courses are also offered at Corporate College East in Warrensville Heights.

Online: The Management MBA is offered in a top-ranked hybrid format.

FOR MORE INFORMATION SEE S3

Bluffton 419-358-3000 bluffton.edu/mba

MBA Program Highlights: Four-semester program with concentrations offered in Accounting and Financial Management; and Leadership.

Class Locations: Bluffton and Edison Community College in Piqua.

Online: The Collaborative MBA offers live videoconference classes, with two, oneweek residencies.

PUBLIC

CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY Weatherhead School of Management Cleveland 216-368-2030 weatherhead.case.edu/degrees

MBA Program Highlights: Full-time, part-time and Executive MBA, as well as an executive track for health care professionals in partnership with the Cleveland Clinic. The university also offers eight specialty master’s programs and nine dual-degree master’s programs.

Class Location: Cleveland.

Online: None.

Bowling Green 419-372-2488 bgsu.edu/business/students/futurestudents/graduate-programs/mba.html

MBA Program Highlights: Concentrations are available in Accounting, Finance and Supply Chain Management. Students also may develop their own customized areas of emphasis by selecting elective courses from the graduate catalog. The university also offers an Executive MBA and a Professional MBA. Class Locations: Main campus in Bowling Green and off-campus classrooms in Perrysburg and Findlay.

Online: None.

PRIVATE

DEFIANCE COLLEGE

Defiance 419-783-2359 defiance.edu/graduate-programs/ mba-home.html MBA Program Highlights: General MBA. Class Location: Defiance.

Online: Some courses are available online.

FOR PROFIT

FOR MORE INFORMATION SEE S4

PRIVATE BOWLING GREEN STATE UNIVERSITY College of Business Administration

PRIVATE

CEDARVILLE UNIVERSITY School of Business Administration Cedarville 937-766-8000 cedarville.edu/MBA

MBA Program Highlights: MBA, MBA with Operations Management Concentration, MBA with Healthcare Administration Concentration and dual PharmD/MBA (pharmacy).

Class Location: Online only.

Online: Yes.

DEVRY UNIVERSITY Keller Graduate School of Management

216-328-8754 keller.edu/graduate-degree-programs/ mba-program.html MBA Program Highlights: Concentrations in Accounting; Business Intelligence and Analytics Management; Entrepreneurship; Finance; General Management; Global Supply Chain Management; Health Services; Human Resources; Information Systems Management; Marketing; and Project Management.

Class Location: Seven Hills.

Online: Online MBA program is available.

PRIVATE

PUBLIC FRANCISCAN UNIVERSITY OF STEUBENVILLE

CAPITAL UNIVERSITY School of Management & Leadership Columbus 614-236-6996 capital.edu/mba/

MBA Program Highlights: MBA classes meet once a week, on Monday or Thursday evenings. Program can be completed within two calendar years.

Class Locations: Bexley. Some classes may be offered at Capital University’s Law School in Columbus.

Online: None.

PRIVATE

CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY Monte Ahuja College of Business

Cleveland 216-687-3730 csuohio.edu/business/academics/ master-business-administration MBA Program Highlights: Executive MBA (19 months), Online Accelerated MBA (12 months), Health Care Administration MBA, full-time and parttime MBAs available as well as the BBA 2 MBA program for recent Cleveland State University business alumni.

Class Location: Cleveland and online.

Online: Online Accelerated MBA program available. Many of the courses in the fullor part-time MBA are also offered online.

FOR MORE INFORMATION SEE S5

Steubenville 800-783-6220 or 740-284-5239 franciscan.edu/MBAProgram/ or Franciscan.edu/mba-online

MBA Program Highlights: Franciscan University of Steubenville offers a 100% online and an on-campus MBA. Both programs prepare Catholic business people for leadership and focus on the application of functional business knowledge, problem-solving skills and decisionmaking techniques essential to effective management.

Class Location: Steubenville and online.

Online: The full program is available online.

PRIVATE

FRANKLIN UNIVERSITY

OHIO MBA GUIDE

SPONSORED CONTENT

Columbus 877-341-6300 franklin.edu/degrees/masters/mba MBA Program Highlights: The MBA can be completed in 14 months online.

Class Locations: Downtown Columbus, Beavercreek and Dublin locations and online.

Online: The full program is available online.

PRIVATE

HEIDELBERG UNIVERSITY School of Business

Tiffin 800-434-3352 heidelberg.edu/academics/programs/ master-of-business-administration MBA Program Highlights: The oneyear program runs on eight-week terms.

All courses are offered in the evening.

Entrepreneurship concentration offered. The PlusOneAdvantage Free MBA Program is available for all Heidelberg undergraduates.

Class Location: Tiffin Online: No.

PRIVATE

PUBLIC

KENT STATE UNIVERSITY College of Business Administration Kent 330-672-2282 kent.edu/business

MBA Program Highlights: Full-time MBA, Online MBA and Executive MBA. Five dual-degree MBA options are available in Architecture, Nursing, Library Science, Translation and Communication.

Class Location: Kent and online.

Online: International Business and Supply Chain Management are Online MBA program (optional) concentrations.

Independence 866-498-4968 indwes.edu/adult-graduate/ programs/mba/

MBA Program Highlights: The options available include MBA, Associate to MBA, Healthcare Administration, Personal Financial Planning, Project Management, School Administration and MSN to MBA. Class Location: Independence.

Online: Online options are available.

JOHN CARROLL UNIVERSITY Boler School of Business University Heights 216-397-4391 go.jcu.edu/mbaguide

MBA Program Highlights: A full-time MBA for recent college graduates and a part-time MBA for working professionals are offered.

Online: Certain online MBA courses are available.

FOR MORE INFORMATION SEE S7

MALONE UNIVERSITY School of Business and Leadership Canton 330-471-8500 malone.edu/mba

MBA Program Highlights: The program is offered online in 20 months, in the classroom in 24 months or hybrid in 12 months. The campus-based courses are offered one night a week, with classes of 15 to 20 students. Students may choose how they would like to pace the program and will be given a personalized program of study to guide them through the program.

Class Location: Canton, online and hybrid.

Online: The MBA can be completed in 20 months online and is also offered in a hybrid format.

PRIVATE

OHIO CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY Circleville 877-762-8669 ohiochristian.edu/mba

MBA Program Highlights: Concentrations in Accounting, Digital Marketing, Finance, Health Care Management, Human Resources and Organizational Leadership.

Flexible formats available.

Class Location: Circleville.

Online: The program is available online or in a hybrid format.

PRIVATE

PUBLIC OHIO DOMINICAN UNIVERSITY

PRIVATE

farmer school of business

MIAMI UNIVERSITY Farmer School of Business LAKE ERIE COLLEGE School of Business

MBA Program Highlights: Professional MBA, Accelerated MBA and an Online MBA. Optional concentrations are available.

Class Locations: Lakeland Community College’s Holden Center in Kirtland and Lorain County Community College’s University Center Building in Lorain.

Online: The MBA is available 100% online.

FOR MORE INFORMATION SEE S9

PRIVATE

FOR MORE INFORMATION SEE S6

PRIVATE

PRIVATE

FOR MORE INFORMATION SEE S8

Painesville 440-375-7075 lec.edu/parkermba

INDIANA WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY DeVoe School of Business

May 21, 2018 S15

LOURDES UNIVERSITY College of Business and Leadership

Sylvania 419-517-8929 lourdes.edu/admissions/graduateadmissions/master-of-businessadministration-mba/ MBA Program Highlights: The Lourdes University Master of Business Administration offers a contemporary curriculum that prepares graduates for leadership positions in the 21st century.

The accredited program is taught by faculty with real-life experience who have served as senior corporate executives at Fortune 500 companies and who have launched entrepreneurial ventures.

Class Locations: Main campus in Sylvania and onsite at The Andersons in Maumee.

Online: None.

West Chester 513-895-8876 miamioh.edu/fsb/mba/

MBA Program Highlights: The program can be completed in two years. The accelerated format includes extended evening classes, with classes held twice a week.

Class Location: West Chester.

Online: None.

Columbus 614-251-4615 ohiodominican.edu/MBA

MBA Program Highlights: Concentrations in Data Analytics, Risk Management, Finance, Accounting and Leadership. An on-campus only concentration is available in Sport Management.

Class Location: The program can be completed entirely online, on campus, or a combination of both formats. The MBA can be completed in 16 months.

Online: The program can be completed online.

PRIVATE

PUBLIC

MOUNT ST. JOSEPH UNIVERSITY

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY Max M. Fisher College of Business

Cincinnati 800-654-9314 msj.edu/academics/graduate-programs/ master-of-business-administration/

MBA Program Highlights: Saturday MBA and a 4+1 MBA, the latter of which is available to full-time undergraduate students.

Class Location: Cincinnati.

Online: None.

PRIVATE MOUNT VERNON NAZARENE UNIVERSITY

Columbus 614-292-8511 fisher.osu.edu/graduate

MBA Program Highlights: Full-time MBA, part-time MBA (evening and/or weekend), dual degrees and Executive MBA. Fisher MBA students personalize their curriculum with advice and coaching from a dedicated team of Fisher staff. Chart a path toward your unique career goals through 10 optional majors, or an extensive array of elective courses at Fisher and across The Ohio State University.

Class Location: Main campus in Columbus.

Online: None.

FOR MORE INFORMATION SEE S10

Mount Vernon, New Albany, Mansfield and Newark 800-839-2355 mvnu.edu/gps/graduateprograms/ masterofbusinessadministration

PUBLIC

MBA Program Highlights: Concentrations in Finance, Human Resource Management, Health Care Administration, Ministry Leadership and Organizational Management.

Class Locations: Online or in a hybrid format in Mount Vernon or New Albany.

Online: The program is offered fully online.

OHIO UNIVERSITY College of Business

Athens 740-593-2053 or 800-622-3124

OHIO MBA GUIDE

S16 May 21, 2018

business.ohio.edu/pmba MBA Program Highlights: Ohio University’s Professional MBA is a part-time, two-year program. Concentrations are available in Business Analytics, Executive Management, Finance and Health Care.

Online: The curriculum is delivered in a flexible hybrid format — a blend of virtual and oncemonthly Saturday residencies in Dublin.

PRIVATE

OTTERBEIN UNIVERSITY

MBA Program Highlights: Part-time and full-time programs, and evening classes available. Focus areas offered in Financial Economics, Health Care Administration and Actuarial Science.

Class Location: Westerville.

Online: None.

PRIVATE

SOUTH UNIVERSITY College of Business

Warrensville Heights 216-755-5000 southuniversity.edu/cleveland/areasof-study/business-administrationand-accounting/business-administrationmaster-of-business-administration-mba MBA Program Highlights: Part time and full time. The program offers a general MBA and Health Care Management MBA. Class Location: Warrensville and online.

Online: The entire program is available online.

TIFFIN UNIVERSITY Tiffin 800-968-6446 go.tiffin.edu

MBA Program Highlights: Concentrations available including Finance, Health Care Administration, Human Resource Management, Leadership, International Business, Sports Management and Data Analytics.

Class Location: Tiffin.

Online: Online options available.

PUBLIC

MBA Program Highlights: Flexible MBA with full- and part-time options, as well as a two-year Saturday MBA program. Concentrations available in Business Analytics, Finance, Global Technological Innovation, Health Care Management, International Business, Management, Strategic Marketing and Supply Chain Management.

Class Locations: Akron.

Online: All MBA required courses may be offered online. Electives are in-person only.

Findlay 800-472-9502 findlay.edu/business/mba/ MBA Program Highlights: Day, evening and online classes available.

Class Location: Main campus in Findlay.

Online: Online classes are available.

PRIVATE

UNIVERSITY OF NORTHWESTERN OHIO

Lima 419-998-3180 unoh.edu/academics/graduate-college/ mba.html

PUBLIC

MBA Program Highlights: The program offers small, interactive classes online and completed 18 months.

Online: The program is available online.

UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI Carl H. Lindner College of Business

PUBLIC

UNIVERSITY OF TOLEDO College of Business and Innovation

MBA Program Highlights: Full time, part time and online. The MBA can be customized with one of more than 20 different specializations. Specialization options include Marketing, Finance, Data Analytics, Entrepreneurship and Health Care.

Class Locations: Clifton and Blue Ash, Ohio.

Online: The online MBA is 100% online and can be completed in as few as 12 months.

Toledo 419-530-5680 utoledo.edu/business/graduate/

MBA Program Highlights: The program offers an accelerated 12-month Executive MBA, and a Professional MBA in which students can take classes at their own pace in a variety of formats with multiple specializations.

Class Location: Toledo.

Online: The professional MBA offers various courses both in class as well as online. Certain courses also utilize a hybrid format.

PRIVATE

UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON School of Business Administration

FOR MORE INFORMATION SEE S12

Dayton 937-229-3733 udayton.edu/business/academics/ graduate/master_of_business_ administration/index.php

PRIVATE

MBA Program Highlights: Specialties offered in Management, Health Care Management and Marketing. Accelerated format is available.

Class Location: North Canton.

Online: The program is available online.

WRIGHT STATE UNIVERSITY Raj Soin College of Business Dayton 937-775-2437 wright.edu/mba

MBA Program Highlights: Part-time evening programs and online programs are available.

Concentrations offered in 10 fields, including Economics, Finance, Health Care Management, International Business, Management, Marketing and New Venture Creation.

Class Location: Dayton and Lake campuses.

Online: All core classes are offered online every semester, and at least three of the concentration courses are offered online each term. You can complete the MBA program completely online in the same amount of time as if you were taking classes on-campus.

PRIVATE XAVIER UNIVERSITY Williams College of Business Cincinnati 513-745-4800 xavier.edu/master-of-businessadministration/

MBA Program Highlights: Full-time, evening, off-site, Executive MBA and online. Concentrations in Business Intelligence, Finance, Innovation/Change/Entrepreneurship, International Business, Marketing, Pricing Strategy and Supply Chain Management.

Class Locations: Cincinnati or West Chester.

Online: The program is available online.

PUBLIC

MBA Program Highlights: Concentrations available in Marketing, Finance and Cybersecurity. The program offers JD/MBA, flexible programs and scheduling, and night and online courses.

Class Location: Dayton. The LexisNexis Park is for LexisNexis cohorted students only. Cybersecurity courses are held on the main campus.

Online: MBA@Dayton and an Advanced Standing MBA, both delivered online. The Advanced Standing MBA is available for individuals with significant work experience in the field.

URSULINE COLLEGE Pepper Pike 440-646-8119 mba.ursuline.edu

MBA Program Highlights: Eight-week sessions and evening classes offered.

MBA in Marketing, Human Resource Management, Project Management and Health Services Management.

Class Location: Pepper Pike.

Online: Some courses are available online.

WALSH UNIVERSITY DeVille School of Business

UNIVERSITY OF FINDLAY

YOUNGSTOWN STATE UNIVERSITY Williamson College of Business Administration Youngstown 330-941-3069 mba.ysu.edu

MBA Program Highlights: Evening classes, and flexible and accelerated formats available.

Class Location: Main campus in Youngstown.

Online: The MBA program is available online.

PRIVATE

PRIVATE UNIVERSITY OF AKRON College of Business Administration

North Canton 330-490-7399 walsh.edu/mba

PUBLIC

Cincinnati 513-556-7020 business.uc.edu/mba.html

‘

PRIVATE

College of Business

Akron 330-972-7043 gradbusiness.uakron.edu

FOR MORE INFORMATION SEE S11

Westerville 614-823-1095 otterbein.edu/mba

SPONSORED CONTENT

FOR MORE INFORMATION SEE S13

Schools in the directory are those with a physical presence in Ohio and that verified the information upon request from Crain Content Studio-Cleveland.

Managing editor, custom and special projects Amy Ann Stoessel, astoessel@crain.com

Project editor Kathy Carr

Graphic designer Staci Buck

For more information about custom publishing opportunities, please contact Amy Ann Stoessel.

CRAINâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

Orbis is shifting its Mentor headquarters in $15M move

By STAN BULLARD sbullard@crain.com @CrainRltywriter

Orbis, a pallet and plastic packaging producer, searched widely for room to grow but satisfied its outsized space requirement three miles away as it seeks to consolidate to one site from its two current locations on Tyler Boulevard in Mentor.

The subsidiary of Neena, Wis.based Menasha Corp. has leased 276,000 square feet at the former Caterpillar plant, 7206 Justin Way, now an industrial park that S.L. Equities of Los Angeles created by subdividing the former Caterpillar plant where tow motors once were made. Justin Way is a side street of Tyler.

Orbis plans to consolidate operations and logistics from two locations, at 8100 and 9050 Tyler, to the new site. Orbis will retain about 150

jobs in the suburb with plans to add 25 to 80 jobs over the next decade.

The investment will be for more than $15 million to move and outfit the new location, according to a report Orbis filed to obtain incentives from the city of Mentor.

Christopher Livingston, principal and managing director of the Avison Young brokerageâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cleveland office, said the important thing about the transaction, which his brokerage handled for Orbis, is that it â&#x20AC;&#x153;elected to stay here.â&#x20AC;? Finding that much space is no small task with industrial vacancy at just 4% in Northeast Ohio, and finding it on the same street was even more ironic. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Sometimes you win one,â&#x20AC;? said Livingston, who worked on the assignment with David Horowitz, an Avison Young senior associate. The company also needed to move quickly on the consolidation, Livingston said, so building from the ground up

was not an option.

Ron Traub, Mentor director of economic and community development, said even though the two locations are close, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Orbis still has to put heavy equipment on a truck to move it.â&#x20AC;? The deal is a plus, he added, because the company will empty two smaller locations that will provide options for other companies in the suburb.

Mentor has agreed to provide a 10year incentive grant to Orbis, which will provide the company a check equal to 10% of the municipal income tax on the additional payroll it expects to add. Altogether, Mentor will cut checks for Orbis totaling at least $1.7 million over the decade, according to Traubâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s estimates.

For the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s part, Samantha Goetz, Orbis marketing communications manager, declined comment in an email because details of the project are still in the planning stage.

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M AY 21 - 2 7, 2 018

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PA G E 3 3

CLEVELAND BUSINESS 700 W. St. Clair Ave., Suite 310, Cleveland, OH 44113-1230 Phone: (216) 522-1383 | www.crainscleveland.com | @CrainsCleveland Elizabeth McIntyre Mary Kramer Scott Suttell Tim Magaw David Kordalski Damon Sims Sue Walton Kevin Kleps Stan Bullard Real estate/ construction Reporters Jay Miller, Government Dan Shingler Energy/steel/auto Rachel McCafferty Manufacturing/ energy Jeremy Nobile, Finance Lydia CoutrĂŠ, Health care Data editor Chuck Soder Cartoonist Rich Williams

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M AY 21 - 2 7, 2 018 |

CRAINâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

THE LIST

Largest Public Companies in Northeast Ohio Ranked by Market Value

MARKET VALUE (MILLIONS) THIS LAST YEAR YEAR

NET INCOME (MILLIONS)

COMPANY/TICKER SYMBOL HEADQUARTERS

% 4-30-2018 4-28-2017 CHANGE

FY 2017

FY 2016

% RETURN ON CHANGE EQUITY (1) TYPE OF BUSINESS

TOP LOCAL EXECUTIVE

1

3

Progressive Corp./PGR 6300 Wilson Mills Road, Mayfield Village 44143 (440) 461-5000/www.progressive.com

$35,112.9

$23,073.3

52.2%

$1,592.2

$1,031.0

54.43%

17.53%

Insurance company

Susan Patricia Griffith president, CEO

2

2

Sherwin-Williams Co./SHW 101 W. Prospect Ave., Cleveland 44115 (216) 566-2000/www.sherwin.com

$34,214.7

$31,168.2

9.8%

$1,772.3

$1,132.7

56.46%

65.12%

Manufacturer of paint, coatings and related products

John G. Morikis president, CEO, chairman

3

1

Eaton/ETN 1000 Eaton Blvd., Beachwood 44122 (440) 523-5000/www.eaton.com

$32,870.9

$33,928.8

-3.1%

$2,985.0

$1,916.0

55.79%

18.50%

Manufacturer of electrical, hydraulic, aerospace, truck and automotive products

Craig Arnold chairman, CEO

4

4

Parker Hannifin Corp./PH 6035 Parkland Blvd., Mayfield Heights 44124 (216) 896-3000/www.parker.com

$21,902.5

$21,433.6

2.2%

$983.4

$806.8

21.88%

19.98%

Provider of fluid power systems and electromechanical controls

Thomas L. Williams chairman, CEO

5

5

KeyCorp/KEY 127 Public Square, Cleveland 44114 (216) 689-6300/www.key.com

$21,213.6

$20,018.0

6.0%

$1,296.0

$791.0

63.84%

8.53%

Bank holding company

Beth E. Mooney chairman, CEO

6

8

TransDigm Group Inc./TDG 1301 E. 9th St., Suite 3000, Cleveland 44114 (216) 706-2939/www.transdigm.com

$16,732.6

$13,038.3

28.3%

$596.9

$586.4

1.79%

NM

Designer and producer of highly engineered aircraft components

Kevin M. Stein, president, CEO W. Nicholas Howley, executive chairman

7

7

FirstEnergy Corp./FE 76 S. Main St., Akron 44308 (800) 736-3402/www.firstenergycorp.com

$16,405.7

$13,285.6

23.5%

($1,724.0)

($6,177.0)

NM

-33.92%

Electric utility holding company

Charles E. Jones Jr. president, CEO

8

6

The J.M. Smucker Co./SJM One Strawberry Lane, Orrville 44667 (330) 682-3000/jmsmucker.com

$12,959.4

$14,755.3

-12.2%

$592.3

$688.7

-14%

8.55%

Manufacturer of branded food products

Mark T. Smucker president, CEO

9

12

Steris/STE 5960 Heisley Road, Mentor 44060 (440) 354-2600/www.steris.com

$8,019.8

$6,268.1

27.9%

$110.0

$110.8

-0.72

3.78%

Maker of sterile processing and infection prevention systems

Walter M. Rosebrough Jr. president, CEO

10 10

Nordson Corp./NDSN 28601 Clemens Road, Westlake 44145 (440) 892-1580/www.nordson.com

$7,455.3

$7,204.7

3.5%

$295.8

$271.8

8.81%

29.48%

Manufacturer of systems used to dispense, apply and control adhesives, coatings and other fluids

Michael F. Hilton president, CEO

11 11

RPM International Inc./RPM 2628 Pearl Road, Medina 44258 (330) 273-5090/www.rpminc.com

$6,459.1

$7,021.1

-8.0%

$181.8

$354.7

-48.74%

13.13%

Provider of specialty coatings, sealants and building materials

Frank C. Sullivan chairman, CEO

12

Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co./GT 200 Innovation Way, Akron 44316 (330) 796-2121/www.goodyear.com

$6,022.1

$9,122.5

-34.0%

$346.0

$1,264.0

-72.63%

7.62%

Tire manufacturer

Richard J. Kramer chairman, CEO, president

13 14

Lincoln Electric Holdings Inc./LECO 22801 St. Clair Ave., Euclid 44117 (216) 481-8100/www.lincolnelectric.com

$5,437.8

$5,858.2

-7.2%

$247.5

$198.4

24.75%

30.09%

Manufacturer of arc welding products

Christopher L. Mapes chairman, president, CEO

14 13

Forest City Realty Trust Inc./FCEA 127 Public Square, Suite 3100, Cleveland 44114 (216) 621-6060/www.forestcity.net

$5,350.6

$6,010.7

-11.0%

$206.0

($158.4)

NM

5.64%

Owner and developer of real estate

David J. LaRue president, CEO

15 NA

GrafTech International Ltd./EAF 982 Keynote Circle, Brooklyn Heights 44131 (216) 676-2000/www.graftech.com

$4,829.6

NA

NA

$8.0

($235.8)

NM

2.39%

Manufacturer of graphite electrodes and cathodes

Joel L. Hawthorne president, CEO

16 15

TFS Financial Corp./TFSL 7007 Broadway Ave., Cleveland 44105 (216) 441-6000/www.thirdfederal.com

$4,109.0

$4,596.1

-10.6%

$88.9

$80.6

10.33%

5.31%

Bank holding company

Marc A. Stefanski chairman, president, CEO

17 16

Cedar Fair LP/FUN One Cedar Point Drive, Sandusky 44870 (419) 627-2233/www.cedarfair.com

$3,821.6

$4,030.4

-5.2%

$215.5

$177.7

21.27%

300.39%

Operator of amusement and water parks

Richard A. Zimmerman, CEO Matthew A. Ouimet, executive chairman

18 19

PolyOne Corp./POL 33587 Walker Road, Avon Lake 44012 (440) 930-1000/www.polyone.com

$3,346.8

$3,205.7

4.4%

($57.7)

$165.2

NM

26.21%

Provider of specialized polymer materials and services

Robert M. Patterson chairman, president, CEO

19 18

The Timken Co./TKR 4500 Mount Pleasant St. N.W., North Canton 44720 (234) 262-3000/www.timken.com

$3,333.8

$3,763.2

-11.4%

$203.4

$140.8

44.46%

14.52%

Manufacturer of engineered bearings and mechanical power transmission products

Richard G. Kyle president, CEO

20 17

DDR Corp./DDR 3300 Enterprise Parkway, Beachwood 44122 (216) 755-5500/www.ddr.com

$2,659.2

$3,932.6

-32.4%

($241.7)

$60.0

NM

-7.92%

Real estate investment trust

David R. Lukes president, CEO

21 20

Applied Industrial Technologies Inc./AIT 1 Applied Plaza , Cleveland 44115 (216) 426-4000/www.applied.com

$2,474.6

$2,498.0

-0.9%

$133.9

$29.6

352.75

19.09%

Distributor and provider of industrial parts and service

Neil A. Schrimsher president, CEO

22 22

Cleveland-Cliffs Inc./CLF 200 Public Square, Suite 3300, Cleveland 44114 (216) 694-5700/www.clevelandcliffs.com

$2,209.2

$1,991.8

10.9%

$367.0

$174.1

110.8%

NM

Iron ore mining company

Lourenco Goncalves chairman, president, CEO

23 23

Ferro Corp./FOE 6060 Parkland Blvd., Mayfield Heights 44124 (216) 875-5600/www.ferro.com

$1,857.5

$1,498.7

23.9%

$57.1

($20.8)

NM

18.89%

Manufacturer of specialty performance materials

Peter T. Thomas chairman, president, CEO

24 27

A. Schulman Inc./SHLM 3637 Ridgewood Road, Fairlawn 44333 (330) 666-3751/www.aschulman.com

$1,265.6

$928.6

36.3%

$33.0

($357.1)

NM

18.21%

Supplier of high-performance plastic compounds, resins and powders

Joseph M. Gingo chairman, CEO, president

25 24

Fairmount Santrol Holdings Inc./FMSA 8834 Mayfield Road, Chesterland 44026 (800) 255-7263/http://fairmountsantrol.com

$1,235.5

$1,155.3

6.9%

$53.8

($140.2)

NM

18.93%

Provider of high-performance sand and sand-based products

Jenniffer D. Deckard president, CEO

26 26

Hyster-Yale Materials Handling Inc./HY 5875 Landerbrook Drive, Suite 300, Mayfield Hts. 44124 (440) 449-9600/www.hyster-yale.com

$1,178.2

$988.8

19.2%

$48.6

$42.8

13.55%

9.38%

Manufacturer of lift trucks, provider of aftermarket parts

Alfred M. Rankin Jr. chairman, president, CEO

9

RESEARCHED BY CHUCK SODER (CSODER@CRAIN.COM)

Want the full Excel version of this list Ă&#x2018; and every Crain's list? Become a Data Member: CrainsCleveland.com/data The full digital list includes 59 companies and names of additional executives. Source: S&P Global Market Intelligence (Marketintelligence.spglobal.com) and Crain's research. Net income figures represent income attributable to ordinary shareholders. NM=Not meaningful. Send all feedback to Chuck Soder: csoder@crain.com.

(1) Return on equity is designed to show how efficiently a company is producing profits. The figures were calculated using this formula: 2017 earnings from continuing operations / ((2017 total equity + 2016 total equity)/ 2)

CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

ANALYSIS

ccoder@crain.com @ChuckSoder

Progressive Corp. is once again No. 1 on our list ranking Northeast Ohio’s largest public companies — a feat it last achieved in 2010.

Granted, the list is ranked by total market value as of April 30. If we had ranked the list on May 17, Sherwin-Williams would be No. 1.

Still, you’ve got to hand it to Progressive. The Mayfield Heights-based insurance company had a huge 2017.

Its market value — the combined value of all Progressive stock — jumped 52.2% during the previous 12 months, hitting $35.1 billion on April 30. That’s the biggest increase posted by any company in the top 30 (some of the smaller companies on the full digital version of the list saw larger percentage increases).

Many companies on our list saw their stock prices jump just after the November 2016 election — especially local banks and mining-related companies could stand to benefit

from having deregulation-minded Republicans in control of Congress and the White House. But Progressive’s stock has been steadily rising ever since.

The company’s profits have been strong: Its net income grew by 54% in 2017, jumping from about $1 billion to nearly $1.6 billion. It helped that the company wrote $27.1 billion in net premiums during 2017, up $3.8 billion, or 16%, from 2016 — a record increase, according to the company’s 2017 annual report. Progressive also benefited from an increase in the value of its investment portfolio and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which lowered the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%.

Progressive produced strong profits in the first quarter of 2018 as well, beating Q1 numbers from the previous year by 69%.

Both Sherwin-Williams (No. 2 on the list) and Eaton (No. 3) posted huge profit increases in 2017 as well, but their stocks haven’t performed quite as well so far this year.

The full digital list includes 59 companies. Overall, they saw their combined market value rise by

|

PA G E 3 5

Feed a 16-foot F Masai giraffe M

6.75%, excluding three companies that weren’t on last year’s list.

But the Russell 3000 Index — which includes the 3,000 largest public companies in the United States — did better, rising by 11% during that same 12-month period.

This year GrafTech International returned to the list at No. 15. Private equity firm Brookfield Asset Management took the Brooklyn Heightsbased company private three years ago, but in April the Independence based graphite products maker went public once again, raising more than $571 million in the process.

Victory Capital Holdings, a money management firm based in Brooklyn, went public this year, too. It’s at No. 30.

On the other hand, Chart Industries is now gone from the list: The cryogenic equipment maker moved to Georgia in 2017. And next year we’ll likely say goodbye to A. Schulman, which is slated to be acquired.

Diebold Nixdorf remains on the full digital list, but it narrowly missed the print version: Its market value dropped by 45% during the 12-month period ending April 30.

ELK & ELK

M AY 21 - 2 7, 2 018

Experience the Wonder

Big 2017 sends Progressive to top of public company list

By CHUCK SODER

|

Visit Lulu, the new V baby rhino b Unlock Your Adventure U

Learn more at FutureForWildlife.org ©Registered trademark of Cleveland Metroparks.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4

They won’t share what their marketing budget has grown to, but it’s significant. The firm is effectively two businesses today between its marketing division and the law firm itself.

That, coupled with a fresh approach to viewing cases and really deciding which to take, led to a more efficient and productive business.

But marketing even helps recruit other attorneys and, they feel, promote credibility in a business where lawyers are sometimes viewed pejoratively as ambulance chasers.

Kelley and company are aware of that, but take exception to the label.

While they take about 30% to 40% of what’s won in a case, they only get paid if they win. When they talk about taking a case, they pitch it in terms of helping a victim “get an answer.” That applies most often to issues like medical malpractice, where circumstance of the incident can be difficult and time-consuming to truly understand — versus traffic accidents, which tend to be more straightforward.

Similarly, those cases can ebb and flow in frequency. Some are more common than others, but invite lighter paydays than major, less-infrequent malpractice suits.

The firm declined to share revenues.

But Kelley, noting that there can be up-and-down years because of the sometime unpredictable nature of cases to work, said they tend to view top-line growth in three-year chunks.

He said that in each of those periods, the firm’s revenues have grown on average about 5% each period.

Last year was the firm’s best year yet, according to Kelley. The firm reports serving more than 20,000 clients so far to date and recovered more than $1 billion.

For Kelley, winning a case is rewarding, but even more so when doing it for someone who never thought they’d need them.

“We’re in a business that people think they’re never going to need,” he said. “So no matter where the adver-

LEARN MORE TODAY ABOUT HOW CRAIN’S CAN HELP YOU AND YOUR CONTENT MARKETING PROGRAM. Contact Amy Stoessel at 216.771.5155 or astoessel@crain.com.

From left, co-founder and senior partner David Elk, managing partner Arthur Elk, co-managing partner James Kelley and equity partner John O’Neil are the Elk & Elk leadership team. (Ken Blaze for Crain’s)

tising is, it’s intrusive. No one wakes up and says today is the day I’m going to get hit by a car or see medical malpractice. And it’s frustrating when you’re working so hard and you feel like you’re doing something for society as a whole like, uses as a political pinball.”

But when accidents do happen, that blanket marketing helps increase the chances people will call them.

“It’s a fun and exciting job,” Kelley said. “You’re kind of the perpetual underdog.”

Ohio and beyond Today, the firm, based in Mayfield Heights, has offices across Ohio, plus one each in Cincinnati, which also serves the upper end of Kentucky, and Seattle. It counts about 20 lawyers and more than 60 support staff, which includes physicians and investigators.

Besides growing, there are plans to evolve the marketing approach, as online ads are considered.

Another 15 years from now, Kelley could see the business dabbling in possibly two or three other new markets.

The plan moving forward is for the same slow and steady growth the firm has enjoyed these past decades.

That means more commercials, more partnerships with sports teams —

sportscasts are useful because live TV is preferred over more recordable shows in which ads are skipped on DVRs — and more charitable work. It also means reworking their approach to ads. Just as phone books have fallen out of style, new avenues are being considered for their print and TV ads, including some things that could run online.

But that’s all besides winning cases, where the firm has a reputation for almost always going to trial.

“That drives up the value for clients,” Arthur said, “because the opposition knows we will spare no resource to make sure our clients get the results that provide justice for the injuries they received.”

And as far as who’s the best fit to lead that drive in the future, the Elk brothers think Kelley — who will be supported by partner John O’Neil, 52 — are putting their weight behind the attorneys most instrumental in the firm’s growth.

That means Kelley will be in line for those ubiquitous commercials.

Some spots have already been shot, even though it was literally written in his contract 16 years ago that he wouldn’t have to do those.

“That’s probably not something I’m going to sue over,” he said with a laugh.

PA G E 3 6

|

M AY 21 - 2 7, 2 018 |

CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

AKRON

Retailers seeing boost from eBay program

By DAN SHINGLER dshingler@crain.com @DanShingler

When eBay and the city of Akron in January announced that the big online auction site would conduct its first Retail Revival program in Akron, it would have been easy to be skeptical.

Of course, the internet giant wants more vendors — including small, startup retailers — to use its site. The more people who sell on eBay, the more money eBay makes, after all.

But two months after the one-year program began in March, participating retailers say they’ve gotten far more than just a recruitment effort. Those in the program say it’s boosting their sales and preparing them to be successful online sellers in the future, even if they were already selling on eBay or other platforms, such as Amazon.

“For us, Amazon was huge last fall, and we did about $10,000 worth of business on Amazon last year,” said Michael Considine, owner of Akron’s Norka Food & Beverage Co. “But we had a huge April on eBay, where we did about $2,000, so it’s right on line with other platforms already … and catching up quickly.”

Considine sells soda in glass bottles — in other words, a heavy and fragile item for which shipping can be expensive. He has to find buyers who really want it. But he still finds customers all over the country and beyond, thanks in part to the global reach of eBay. A lot of his online customers are former Akronites looking for a nostalgic taste of home. Norka was a beverage company in much of the 20th century and Considine picked up the name and reformulated its recipes using old ingredient labels and other research.

“In fact, on a good percentage of orders we get in the comment note box ‘I was born in Akron,’ or ‘I lived in Akron — can’t wait to try Norka again.’ There’s just a nostalgic connection,” Considine said.

Those connections likely can only

Ryan “Otis” Adams of Dirty River Bicycle Works in the Northside Marketplace has found success selling tools and parts on eBay. (Dan Shingler)

be made online, he said, assuming, of course, that a nostalgic transplant can find his product. And that, he and others say, is where eBay provides the most and most effective help.

The Retail Revival program doesn’t discount fees for participants; other eBay retailers would likely cry foul if it did. All that participants get in terms of material support is a few packing supplies. Participants can get reduced eBay fees if they become a top seller, and the program might help them achieve that status more quickly. But that opportunity exists for everyone selling on eBay. What Retail Revival members get that is far more valuable, they say, is one-on-one training, and coaching and webinars about how to put together the best listings, how to price items and how to get their products to show up in searches, preferably ahead of competing products.

“We didn’t really understand that there are different practices to get higher on the listing rankings, or what it takes to become a top-rated

Michael Considine of Norka Food & Beverage finds customers all over the country, thanks in part to the reach of eBay. (Contributed photo)

seller, so you can get lower fees and higher rankings,” said Glenn Miller, co-owner of Whiskertin Lighting, which makes production and custom lighting from old industrial parts and other items, with pieces costing from about $65 into the thousands.

Like Considine, Miller had been trying to sell online before the Retail Revival program. The help he’s received has kicked his sales into a higher gear, he said.

“We were doing it, but we only had a few things on there and didn’t have a lot of success with the lights … but after Retail Revival, we started selling quite a few of our products,” Miller said.

Others were new to eBay but have found new opportunities there. Ryan “Otis” Adams runs Dirty River Bicycle Works in Akron’s Northside Marketplace with his wife, Kelley, and two employees. He said he hasn’t begun to sell whole bikes on the platform but has found it to be a great place to sell tools and parts, especially if they’re uncommon items.

“I have a huge inventory of random pieces and parts that is really nice, that I’ve acquired over time.

We’re trying to empty the basement, and that’s our first eBay goal,” he said.

It’s still a tiny portion of his sales, Adams said, but it could be an important part. It allows him to sell bike-related products in the winter to buyers in warmer climates, it gives him more opportunities to show products than his small shop in downtown Akron, and it helps him with niche items, he said.

EBay is a great place to sell rare, discontinued or handmade items, like Miller’s lights, sellers say. That’s because those items don’t have to compete purely on price the way common items often do, and the platform is perfect for connecting esoteric items with specific buyers who want them.

Those involved with the program at a higher level, including eBay itself, also have been pleased with the program. Far more companies signed up than eBay had hoped, said Grace Myers, who was hired by eBay as Retail Revival’s project coordinator and who also co-owns New Territory, a virtual reality company with operations in the Bounce Innovation Hub and the Northside Marketplace.

“They came to Akron hoping to see 30 or 40 businesses join, and they were thrilled to have more than 100 companies come on board,” Myers said.

The program is centered in Akron, but about 15 of the participants are from Warren, where business were also edible to join.

Chris Librie, senior director of global impact and giving at eBay, said his company was drawn to Akron because of the city’s recent efforts to reinvent itself and support new startups.

“We were drawn to the city’s forward-thinking mindset and commitment to its growth and success — especially Mayor of Akron Dan Horrigan and the city’s strong support of innovation and investment in Akron’s startup and business communities,” Librie said in an email.

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SEE EBAY, PAGE 37

Drips answers call to reach passive customers

By JUDY STRINGER clbfreelancer@crain.com

A funny thing happened on the way to the smartphone. People stopped answering calls.

It’s true. Millennials aside, most of us can remember a time when we would trip over siblings to be the first person to a ringing landline. Today, however, with our untethered cellphones almost constantly within reach, we often don’t pick up.

Aaron Christopher “A.C.” Evans has a theory on why. In the contemporary on-demand economy, he said people have more choices than ever when it comes to how we work, play and connect with others, and we are accustomed to calling the shots.

When someone fills out a form on a website, emails a colleague or posts a tweet, it’s done on their time. In this environment, an incoming call has evolved from a thrilling opportunity to break the boredom to an unwelcomed intrusion of your time.

And that perception is a mounting roadblock for service businesses that rely on call centers to interact with their customer base.

“Call centers have been doing the same thing since the ’70s. They just call and call and call you over and over again, and that is becoming less and less and less effective,” Evans said.

Evans’ Akron startup, Drips, provides what he calls a “conversational text messaging” platform to help build a new bridge to customers.

“If I called my mom right now, she probably would not pick up, but she probably would text me back and say, ‘What’s up?’ ” Evans said.

People like texting because unlike calls that demand immediate attention and action, a text conversation can be passive.

“It allows us both to respect each other’s time,” Evans said.

Drips’ homegrown technology fuses artificial intelligence and machine learning into an automated text response system. Rather than dialing a customer 12 times, the call center would place just one call. When it goes unanswered, a Drips-powered text message would be sent to the customer notifying him or her who was calling and why. And, more importantly, it gives the customer the power to determine when an actual phone conversation will happen, Evans said.

He gives this example: “We can text you and say, ‘Hey Bill, it’s ADT. We are trying to reach you. Is there a better time to talk?’ and Bill might say, ‘Yeah, sorry. I am at work or I’m busy now,’ and we say, ‘No problem.

We are open until 9. Can we try you at 6:30?’ An hour or two hours later, Bill replies, ‘How about 6:45?’ We say, ‘OK. Great. Talk to you then.’

“It’s all automated, but very humanlike. You would never know you were talking to a computer,” Evans said.

When 6:35 rolls around, a reminder text would be sent to alert the customer that the company would be calling.

“Then we make the call and transfer it into the client’s call center,” he said.

“We essentially will turn an outbound call center into an inbound call center.”

Drips is holding 300,000 to 400,000 new conversations a day, according to Evans, and recently surpassed the 120 million conversation mark.

Moving upstream Evans and co-founder Anthony Greco launched Drips in January 2016, and the startup has doubled its employee base year-over-year for each of the past two years while tripling its rev-

enue. It currently employs 29 and brought in about $10 million in 2017.

The client base includes “50-some verticals,” Evans said, including financial interests like debt.com, home services companies such as 3 Day Blinds and security firms like ADT and LifeShield.

“We are currently onboarding one of the top four largest cellular carriers in the country and one of the top four insurance companies right now as well,” Evans said. “We’ve been kind of moving upstream to bigger and bigger companies as we establish ourselves more and more.”

No stranger to entrepreneurism, Evans founded Certified Nerds, a computer repair business he later sold, and started a handful of other one-man ventures. He is the first to admit Drips is new territory given size of “the staffing and footprint.”

As the fledgling firm began to hit its stride in late 2016, Evans connected with Blake Squires, a partner at Hatch LLC and a serial entrepreneur who has since helped mentor and guide the Drips’ founders. Squires said aside from Evans’ personal energy and passion, the booming business’ biggest edge is its AI integration and the “im-

pressive” scalability of the technology.

“It really wraps some interesting technology and applies that in a lead-based market, which is always struggling for new technologies, new ways of doing things,” he said. “They have really been able to build something of value to serve that market.”

Next steps for the company include building out a marketing and sales team. Evans said that up until now, in-bound business has come on the “backs of a few tradeshows.”

“We are already industry leaders in what we do, but not a lot of companies even know that we exist yet,” he said.

And a venture capital round is on the horizon as well. While the founders have bootstrapped Drips since its founding, taking it to the next level will require “a pretty significant, let’s calls it a Series A venture round,” Squires said.

“They are building a product that is 100% technology, and when you are doing that, you are always sprinting to stay out in front and it takes a lot of investment,” Squires said. “It’s the whole ‘invest to grow’ equation. With the right technology and the right amount of capital, I don’t think it will take long to get back to the space that they like to operate in, which is profitability.”

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

EBAY

VICTORY

Myers said eBay is investing in the long-term success of the participants to both build its own business and to help retailers in a challenging environment.

“We’re hoping it will ultimately inspire other people to start their own eBay stores and the sellers in this program can share their knowledge, because they’re going to have some pretty special knowledge as a result of this,” Myers said.

Developer Joel Testa, whose proj- Testa ects include the Northside Marketplace, is also someone who’s trying to support local retailers.

Testa’s Northside Marketplace serves as a kind of incubator for new Akron retailers. Located in the city’s Northside Arts District, nearly 50 small retailers work from the space, many of them selling Akron-specifc products, such as honey from local bees or items emblazoned with the city’s slogans and icons.

“If we help a retail tenant grow for them, it helps us as a developer, too,” said Testa, who said he’s been working closely with eBay. Testa says the Northside Marketplace and eBay are such a successful fit, he’s hoping to build similar developments in other cities in partnership with the Retail Revival program.

“We’ve been talking to them about that. And the nice thing is that Akron could serve as the flagship and sort of a marketplace university,” he said.

He might get his wish, too. Librie said eBay plans to announce plans for another Retail Revival city this year, and it likes Testa’s idea to replicate the Northside Marketplace.

“We love Joel Testa’s vision for the Northside Marketplace. His work there is an amazing source of entrepreneurial spirit for Akron. We would love to find similar concepts in our next Retail Revival city,” Librie said.

Key’s investment management business that eventually became Victory was more than a century old as the company looked to shed the division several years ago.

Many banking conglomerates were making similar moves around that time, shedding their money managers to cut costs and focus on core banking services in those years following the last recession. Key eventually sold the business to Victory employees — there were about 148 at the time — and New York private equity firm Crestview Partners for $246 million. Proceeds of Key’s sale were used to buy back stock, benefiting shareholders.

There was no animosity there. The relationship between Key and Victory is still strong, in fact — the latter’s headquarters off Tiedeman Road sits within a complex for KeyCorp staff it subleases from the company. The timing simply felt right, Brown said, for Victory to step out on its own and continue the work it had been doing for so long as Key refocused on other strategies.

“We eventually evolved to the point where it just didn’t make sense for Key to be the owners of Victory Capital,” Brown said.

That was nearly five years ago. And while Crestview is still a majority owner of the business — of which employees own a 35% stake — it’s given Brown and Victory’s board freedom to operate how it likes.

Once separate from Key, Victory set out on an acquisition streak to give it more scale. It’s bought three companies since then: Munder Capital (in 2014); Compass Efficient Model Portfolios (in 2015), which became known as CEMP; and RS Investments (in 2016). It also took a minority stake in Cerebellum Capital in late 2016.

At the time of the spinout from Key, Victory had five different investment franchises. It has nine today, plus its exchange-traded fund (ETF) solutions platform, VictoryShares. All

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 36

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CEO David Brown: “We eventually evolved to the point where it just didn’t make sense for Key to be the owners of Victory Capital.” (Ken Blaze for Crain’s)

are separately branded, but united through Victory at the holding company level.

“And that’s our business model: this big, scaled platform and these investment franchises wrapped around them,” Brown said.

The scale is what felt critically important, Brown said, because through that model money managers can focus squarely on what they do best day in and day out: manage money. The firm, which now counts 300 employees today around the world (about 100 of whom are in Cleveland), has a staff of roughly 100 in sales and marketing.

That centralized marketing group frees up people at firms like Integrity Asset Management, a Victory-owned firm in Rocky River, to focus squarely on investments instead of concerning themselves with things such as operations, technology or marketing.

Transformation At the time of the 2013 buyout, the firm counted about $18 billion in assets. As of March, assets were just below $61 billion, an increase of 238%.

The firm is the largest money manager in Northeast Ohio with at least

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Crestview — which Brown has described as “majority passive owners” — eventually exits its position in the firm. There isn’t a sense of when that might happen exactly, but it’s an inevitability. And as the exit occurs, the intention is for employees to take over the controlling stake of the business.

Although Brown declined to share what earnings looked like outside of what’s been disclosed publicly, postIPO filings show net income for Victory Capital Holdings at the end of the first quarter of 2018 was $10.5 million, which was a significant increase over income over the same period in 2017 of $4.4 million.

In terms of how the business is changing, clients are generally more sophisticated as more information is accessible. As a function of that, there’s an increasing demand for hybrid investment strategies that combine things like index funds with active management, something that bridges the gap between overall actively and passively managed accounts. They’re more commonly referred to as smart beta ETFs, and it’s an area Brown sees growing interest from clients.

Those products are an example of how Victory is positioning itself to offer something for every investors.

Their clientele, after all, is a pretty balanced mix as roughly 58% of all Victory assets belong to institutional accounts and the other 42% is with more retail clients.

“I think the old days of the industry, a lot of the products were sold, not bought,” Brown said. “I think today the clients are extremely sophisticated, the advisers are extremely sophisticated. And today, a lot of the products are bought, not sold.”

As Victory grows, it’ll keep working along its same path combining organic growth with acquisitions. It’ll likely be completely independent in a few years, and probably enjoying even greater reach as other firms are rolled up into its parent company.

“So we’re going to continue what we’re doing every day, and hopefully we get a lot more clients,” Brown said.

“We think we will.”

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$11.5 billion in AUM locally as of December 2017, according to Crain’s research.

In terms of strategies, it had 18 before the buyout, and now it has 72.

It’s managed to grab seasoned money managers from other firms throughout the world and grow its number of offices, which amounts to 13 globally including three outside the U.S. in Hong Kong, Singapore and London.

“We have totally transformed the business over the last four-and-ahalf years,” Brown said, while acknowledging that prior to its IPO, the firm was somewhat flying under the wider public’s radar as a privately owned company.

“We are probably the best-kept secret from a financial industry perspective in Cleveland,” he suggests.

“We kept a low profile while under Key, and then we were just busy doing things.”

With its IPO earlier this year (the firm is now trading under ticker NASDAQ: VCTR), Victory ultimately ended up raising about $140 million. While the firm is still eyeing additional acquisitions, that money is being used more as a source of permanent capital as

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PA G E 3 8

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

M AY 21 - 2 7, 2 018 |

SCHOOLS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Figures provided by John Carroll show interest growing in the business school in terms of applications and deposits made by students to ensure enrollment. And those increases were happening at a greater rate than they were universitywide.

Turning the school into a college — only the university’s second — is one way to recognize that importance, while also attracting new talent to the university, Miciak said.

Miciak said there are a number of big drivers of change in the marketplace, leading to the need for evolved schools. One is the generational changes in the students the Boler College will be teaching. Millennials and members of Generation Z tend to look at the intersection of business, society and individuals differently than previous generations, he said. They’re more interested in balancing profit and purpose. And the companies that would be hiring these graduates are operating in a more global world with changing technology and concerns of environmental sustainability. Students need to be prepared for all of those factors.

“The speed at which we have to change is increasing a lot,” Miciak said.

Rather than sweeping changes, Cleveland State University has been looking for ways to add additional value to its curriculum offerings.

Sanjay Putrevu was named dean of the Monte Ahuja College of Business a little more than a year ago, and one of the first things he did was start to

look for industries the college could better serve in the local economy.

For example, the college is looking into the possibility of creating a certificate focused on health care administration. Doctors and nurses learn how to treat people, but many of them have to serve as small business owners, too, he said.

“We don’t teach them how to manage,” Putrevu said.

So far, the initiatives that have been started in the past year along those lines have been funded by donors — like the Weston Ideation Lab for education around entrepreneurship and the Bernie Moreno Center for Sales Excellence — but Putrevu said that’s not a necessity.

John Carroll is funding its new school and the programs it plans to establish under it through a $25 million capital campaign called the Inspired Lives Campaign. The campaign was launched with a $10 million gift from the Boler Family Foundation and about $5 million from board members. The campaign will help John Carroll establish the School of Accountancy and Information Science and the School of Leadership and Social Innovation, as well as a program in finance and capital markets and other supports for the new college. Miciak said the university didn’t anticipate needing any new construction, but rather planned to redevelop existing spaces.

Akron and Kent State also planned to significantly fund their business college expansions with donations.

Kent State is taking on the construction of a new College of Business Administration building as part of its comprehensive master facilities plan,

Business education by the numbers Here’s a look at enrollment numbers across the nation, collected by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business from more than 400 institutions, as well as from its six Northeast Ohio members: the University of Akron, Baldwin Wallace University, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland State University, John Carroll University and Kent State University.

Undergraduate enrollment, U.S. 2012-2013:

698,512

2016-2017:

791,343

Master’s enrollment, U.S. 2012-2013:

121,597

2016-2017:

177,235

Doctoral enrollment, U.S. 2012-2013:

5,983

2016-2017:

6,025

Undergraduate enrollment, Northeast Ohio 2012-2013:

8,701

2016-2017:

9,819

Master’s enrollment, Northeast Ohio 2012-2013:

1,877

2016-2017:

2,684

Doctoral enrollment, Northeast Ohio 2012-2013:

166

2016-2017:

185

Source: The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business

ADVERTISING SECTION

and it’s aiming to build the new business building without taking on any debt. Part of the expectation on the teams competing for the contract is that they will include some element of philanthropy in their designs.

Part of the need for a new building is space constraints, said business administration college dean Deborah Spake. The college has grown so much over time that students are being taught not only in the existing business building, but in buildings across campus.

But the other part is that the old building, built in the ’70s, isn’t designed for how business is taught today. The classrooms tend to be set in a tiered structure with desks fixed to the ground, a setup that isn’t conducive to the collaborative teamwork approach often encouraged today.

The University of Akron has not seen the enrollment boost many business colleges have in recent years, as it has seen a drop in line with its overall decline in university enrollment. But the university is still investing in its business administration college.

Akron’s $5.2 million Professional Development Center primarily will be paid for with private funds. The two-story center will take up almost 15,000 square feet and will include everything from interview rooms for employers to a business analytics lab to a study abroad center. And while this is professional development for students, there is also space earmarked for community professional development events like conferences or seminars, said College of Business Administration dean Ravi Krovi.

About five or so years ago, the college began putting a stronger focus

on what it calls professional development for students in the business school, in addition to experiential learning and academic curriculum, Krovi said.

“We started talking about what are the things that we should be teaching our students, which we cannot teach in the classroom,” Krovi said.

Competencies like leadership development, teamwork and communication were priorities that rose to the top, and the university started a leadership institute. Today, the university offers the comprehensive, voluntary program Edge, or Exploring Degree Goals and Experiences, for students across campus. Students

“The speed at which we have to change is increasing a lot.”

— Alan Miciak, the John M. Boler dean of the new Boler College of Business

get points for activities like attending workshops or taking part in an internship. And students who earn more than 2,000 points can graduate with CBA Edge honors.

This new building grew out of these programming efforts, as these different programs were physically scattered across the college. The new center will serve as a “one-stop shop” for students, Krovi said.

“I think employers in general are looking for students who are more well-rounded and who are better critical thinkers and are better communicators,” Krovi said. “That’s the biggest change you’re seeing.”

MBA

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He has designed a variety of projects for healthcare, education, and corporate clients. Erb earned both a Master of Architecture and a Master of Urban Design from Kent State University at the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative in 2011.

Hasenstab Architects is pleased to announce the recent hire of architect, Brandilyn Fry, AIA, NCARB, FCSI, CDT. Fry brings more than 21 years of experience in architecture designing projects for education, healthcare, laboratory and commercial clients.

Fry is a fellow of the Construction Specifications Institute (CSI), as well as past president of the Great Lakes Region and Akron Canton Chapter. She is also a past president of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Akron Chapter.

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Raffaela Montemarano has been promoted to Vice President, Controller & Business Information Systems at OEC. She joined OEC in 2008 as the company’s Controller. In her new role, she oversees accounting, treasury, taxation and business systems functions for all OEC global locations in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Ms. Montemarano is a CPA for the state of Ohio and holds an MBA in International Business from Baldwin Wallace University and a BA in Accounting from Cleveland State University.

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For more information or questions regarding advertising in this section, please call Debora Stein at (212) 210-0274 or email: dstein@crain.com

CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

Source Lunch

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M AY 21 - 2 7, 2 018

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Craig Dorn

President and CEO, Youth Opportunities Unlimited For Craig Dorn, education was his ticket out of poverty. ¶ His mother always preached “get an education, get an education.”

It’s what drew him to his work in education, and ultimately to Youth Opportunities Unlimited, a nonprofit workforce development organization. ¶ “I’m like wow this worked for me. I want to help it work for other people,” said Dorn, who recently was promoted to president and CEO of Y.O.U. ¶ Formerly senior vice president of the organization, Dorn replaced Carol Rivchun, who retired in April after leading Y.O.U. for more than 20 years. ¶ Rivchun left the organization in good shape across the board, Dorn said. The organization is in a good spot fiscally, has a strong reputation and board, and offers excellent programming, he said. ¶ “She stabilized funding and improved our community profile,” he said. “Even more important, she improved morale and unified the staff by bringing a unique blend of kindness and business sense.” ¶ As he begins his tenure leading the nonprofit, Dorn sat down with Crain’s to discuss his goals and the opportunities and challenges ahead. — Lydia Coutré

Five things First job Davis Bakery

No. 1 on his travel bucket list Albania

Hobbies Hiking and reading

Favorite books Anything by David Sedaris

Dream job To be in the theater

Lunch spot Sung’s House 1507 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland www.sungshouse.com

The meal Veggie roll combo, salads, Tofu Teriyaki, Yaki Udon

The vibe Tucked in Playhouse Square, Sung’s House offers up sushi, Japanese and Korean food in a lively atmosphere.

The bill $33.54 with tip

Tell me about what Y.O.U. does.

We help teens and young adults ages 14-24 to get onto a path to economic self-sufficiency. We target youth who live or attend school in economically distressed communities. We have school-based programs that focus on youth developing soft skills, graduating high school and making sure they are doing something productive (college, work, technical training) after graduation. We also have community-based programs.

Everyone in town knows us for our summer jobs program. Two years ago, we began to offer credential training programs for young adults ages 18-24 with partners like Tri-C, NewBridge, El Barrio, MAGNET and Ohio Guidestone. We also partner with Ohio Means Jobs and co-facilitate the Young Adult Resource Center with Towards Employment.

proven-successful school-based workforce program — JOG, or Jobs for America’s Graduates.

How were you tapped to lead the organization and why did you want to take on this role?

I have been the No. 2 person at Y.O.U. for almost two decades and played a significant role in the organization’s growth and development. I took on the role because it is the natural next step to me as I continue my personal career journey to do whatever it takes to help youth in need achieve their career dreams through education.

What are your immediate goals in the new role?

Invest in our talent, strengthen our employer relations so they see us more as partners in their workforce needs, position Y.O.U. as a thought leader at the workforce and education planning tables, and maintain our excellence in programs as measured by our job placement and graduation outcomes and customer satisfaction.

What opportunities do you see going forward?

Build on the momentum we have with a fresh approach. Unfortunately, youth unemployment is still too high, especially for youth of color. There are too many disengaged youth in our community — over 21,000 16- to 24-year-olds in Cuyahoga County are neither working or going to school.

This means there is a huge need for innovative youth workforce programs.

Y.O.U. has demonstrated our ability to help teens and young adults achieve workforce readiness, and now the big opportunity is to do even more for older youth (young adults), take our best practices to scale and to work with our partners so that in five years the number of disengaged youth in Cuyahoga County is south of 10,000.

Also, the high graduation rate in CMSD is getting better every year, and we want to be part of the solution to push it over 90%. That means expanding our

What are the biggest challenges facing your work?

No. 1 is always getting the resources to do everything we want to do. In particular, I want to make sure Y.O.U.’s growth is sustained over time. We have doubled in size over the last three years, and the challenge is to diversify funding so that we can maintain that growth.

The parallel challenge is to keep providing excellent service in all of our programs while getting bigger.

The same strategies that worked when we were a 35-person operation don’t work for an 80-person operation. I am trying to keep our innovative spirit while strengthening our internal business practices.

What are some of your more long-term goals?

Do even more with evaluation so that we can articulate a connection between Y.O.U. success and community progress on lowering the number of disconnected youth and improving graduation rates. If this goes the way I think it will (i.e. we will uncover even more evidence of our value to the community), then we can use it as a platform to expand services. Long term, I want to be part of the solution that leads to 90% CMSD graduation rate, cut the number of disengaged youth in half, get Cleveland out of the top 10 in poverty statistics and into the top 10 for economic indicators.

What keeps you interested in this work?

Every day is different, every challenge can be overcome and keeping an eye on the prize — youth on a path to economic self-sufficiency.

I am doing my part in my beloved hometown to get there.

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1 new college 2 new schools Endless opportunities to live inspired.

John Carroll University announces the transformation of the Boler School of Business. The new John M. and Mary Jo Boler College of Business builds on 73 years of excellence in business education. Our new School of Accountancy and Information Science and School of Leadership and Social Innovation will provide students with even greater opportunities to live inspired.

COLLEGE OF BUSINESS