Small Business Profiles
BandwagonFanClub Takes First Prize With Digital Tools
After receiving his MBA from Clemson, Harold Hughes knew he wanted to use the power of his education to bring people together, and he found the opportunity close to home – his passion for the Clemson Tigers. Two days after receiving his degree, Harold set up the LLC that would become BandwagonFanClub, Inc. an experience…
Fueled by Digital Tools, An Independent Seed Supplier Reaches Customers Nationwide
Parker Garlitz and his sister, Kaitlin Jones started a wheatgrass and garden supply company in their garage. Demetrios Agathangelides started a mail-order seed business after immigrating to the United States from Greece in the 1970s. He retired and sold his business to Lance Heaton and Robb Baumann. In 2014, these two small business dreams came…
Digital Tools Maintain a Family Mission
Josenny Tineo and Michelle Peralta have always been family planners, with the two moms organizing every holiday, graduation, and birthday celebration. Eventually, the jokes about their unofficial “jobs” turned into serious suggestions that they should start an events business, and ten years ago Josie Michelle Events was born. With no formal training, the women outworked…
ASM Games Wins Big with Amazon
Alfred Mai started ASM Games in 2017, after being disappointed with the lack of fun card games available when he and his wife hosted game nights with other couples. They took matters into their own hands and created their own games, using Youtube to teach them everything they needed to know about graphic design, manufacturing,…
A CEO Leads Her Company Out of the Yellow Pages
Morgan Miller Plumbing used to advertise the same way as other plumbing companies: in the Yellow Pages. Each year, the ads got more expensive and less effective. “At one point, it seemed like the Yellow Pages were going to bankrupt us instead of helping us,” recalls former CEO Stella Crewse. The company pivoted to digital…
Feliciano’s Peninsula Party Success
Feliciano Zavala and his wife own a small party equipment rental company. Peninsula Party Rentals offers helium tanks, tents, chairs, and popcorn machines for birthday parties, school events, church carnivals, corporate events, and any gathering you can think of. When Feliciano started the company in 2005, it advertised in local magazines and Yellow Pages, which…
Math and Music in Harmony
As a child, Marcus Blackwell had a self-described “fear of math.” Music was his passion, which started with his first piano lesson at five, through college. And it was in college that he figured out that music and math were linked, and this revelation unlocked math for him in a way that it became his…
Digital Services Bring Everyone to the Table
The Scaffidi Restaurant Group is a multi-brand Foodservice Corporation headquartered in Steubenville, Ohio with a variety of concepts within its portfolio, all with the mission to bring the taste of “Grandma’s House on Sunday” to its customers. Run by Frankie DiCarlantonio, his cousins, and their mothers (known as “The Nonnas” to guests), Scaffidi’s prides itself…
FanFood Hits a Home Run
First started by Carson Goodale as a college student in 2014, what began as a concessions ordering app for stadiums soon grew to become a contactless ordering platform for locations and businesses of all kinds. Today, FanFood has more than 300 signed deals with high schools, minor league baseball teams, colleges, drive-ins, hotels, resorts and…