Maverick High Five – 1st Quarter 2016 Newsletter

Congratulations!

Congratulations to SmartCEO Future 50 2016 winner, Gary Nealon – Maverick #74!

Gary Nealon
President, RTA Cabinet Store
Conshohocken, Pennsylvania
gary@rtacabinetstore.com

 

 

 

 

 

The Future 50 Awards program is the largest and most anticipated SmartCEO awards program of the year. This program recognizes 50 of the region’s fastest growing, mid-sized companies. These companies represent the future of the region’s economy and embody the entrepreneurial spirit critical for leadership and success. The winners are chosen based on a three-year average of employee and revenue growth. Winners are profiled in SmartCEO magazine and celebrated at a black-tie optional awards gala.

A SOCIAL APPROACH TO GROWTH

When RTA Cabinet Store president Gary Nealon founded his company in 2006, he had no idea it would grow into the business it is today. Kitchen remodeling is a stressful endeavor for any homeowner, and Nealon wanted to make the buying process as simple as possible to eliminate confusion. By offering the highest-quality product at the most affordable price, Nealon brings his vision of empowering homeowners to fruition. RTA’s initial hurdle was to educate customers about the difference between its product and those offered at big box stores. Social media became the company’s key weapon, and remains so today. “Nobody believed that consumers would buy an entire kitchen online without physically walking into a showroom first, but we definitely proved that theory wrong,” says Nealon.

RTA started on social media, and social media is what keeps it growing today. Through social platforms, RTA has grown its brand and connected with important outreach vehicles like HGTV and DIY Network. Partnerships like these have allowed RTA to leverage its buyers list and tap into other companies’ buyers lists, and share marketing resources. “In our case, partnerships have allowed us to grow horizontally into other related niches, while at the same time growing vertically in our own niche,” says Nealon.

Congratulations to Reggie Chandra – Maverick #248!

Reggie Chandra
Founder/President/CEO of Rhythm Engineering
Lenexa, Kansas
reggie.chandra@rhythmtraffic.com

Big congrats to Reggie Chandra and his team at Rhythm Engineering for creating and installing a signal controller that automatically collects data and seamlessly creates optimized signal timing plans. “It is a‪ gamechanger‬, ‪disruptive‬ and does not exist anywhere in the world.”

Innovation. Passion. Both are at the core of who we are. We are committed to leading the way with groundbreaking traffic management solutions that empower traffic professionals to get loved ones to their destinations faster and safer.

Dr. Reggie Chandra, P.E., P.T.O.E. is the traffic engineer-entrepreneur who invented InSync. His rare combination of education and experience put him in a unique position: he was rooted enough to be a traffic industry insider familiar with the tools and challenges of the trade, yet visionary enough to move beyond accepted methodologies. Dr. Chandra imagined a better, more intelligent way of managing traffic. More importantly, he brought that idea to life. Having spent a large portion of his career as a public traffic engineer focused on optimizing and synchronizing signals, Dr. Chandra grew frustrated with the tools available for him to perform his job. He knew the technology had fallen decades behind, yielding crowded roadways, smog, and wasted time and fuel. He also knew traffic engineers alone didn’t have the answers. In 2005, he set out to find a solution entrepreneurially by assembling a team of computer scientists and mathematicians uninhibited by traffic engineers’ preconceived limitations. They developed a vehicle-counting camera that laid the groundwork for what Chandra had envisioned since the 1990s. In February of 2008, the team flipped the switch on an artificially-intelligent, digital system that optimizes signals to automatically adapt to traffic conditions in real time. As a result, he revolutionized the traffic industry.

Since its launch, InSync has become one of the top selling adaptive traffic control systems in the United States. More U.S. traffic agencies select InSync than any other adaptive traffic control system, making it the fastest growing such system in U.S. history. As of January 2014, InSync is the solution of choice for more than 1,000 intersections in 25 states.