“We needed a brick and mortar location to establish legitimacy,” Cynthia says. “The Janesville Innovation Center was perfect.”

OSHA Compliance for Wisconsin Workers

While The Hearing Place’s Chicagoland office sells hearing aids and performs clinical testing, the focus in Janesville is on OSHA compliance. Many of the Oak Park clients live close to the practice and visit in person, but in Wisconsin, Cynthia and her husband travel around the state, acting as consultants. They visit factories and manufacturing facilities from Beloit to Green Bay to ensure employee hearing is intact.

These onsite visits are industry-mandated. OSHA requires all employees who are exposed to loud noise to have their hearing tested every year.

“Our company goes out and we do the hearing testing,” Cynthia explains. “We have software to generate reports and catch shifts in hearing. When we send the report, we might say, ‘hey — out of your 200 employees, these four had shifts in hearing. Let’s follow up with them to make sure they’re not having noise-induced hearing loss. If they are, let’s make sure they’re wearing proper hearing protection.’”

In addition to industrial consulting, The Hearing Place offers clinical hearing aids and evaluations, and has a government contract to perform evaluations for veterans. Cynthia enjoys the variety.

“It’s nice to float around between the three,” she says.

Competitive Rent, Support Let JIC Tenants Focus on Growth

Cynthia believes the decision to rent space at JIC was a smart business move for several reasons.

“Janesville Innovation Center has been great because we don’t need a lot of space, but we do want to have an actual physical location,” she says. “They have helped us look a lot more legitimate, which gives clients confidence that we aren’t going anywhere.”

There are other benefits to being a JIC tenant.

“The rent is super competitive,” Cynthia continues. “It allows you to build that clientele base. If you go to a place with high rent, your overhead is way higher and you’re more likely to fold. It gave us a nice stepping stone to grow our Wisconsin consulting business.”

Cynthia and her husband plan to stay at the JIC for as long as they are welcome there. Once they leave, she envisions adding clinical audiology and related services, but is in no hurry for that to happen.

“The Janesville Innovation Center is a great place, especially if you’re just looking to expand or start up,” she summarizes. “You have a lot of support, it’s a great facility, and you have everything you need for your business to operate.”

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“When we were young, there was a stop sign in the front yard,” Kane explains. “We had to mow around it, and it was always getting chopped up. Dad wanted to protect the bottom part of it, so he came up with an idea in the early ‘90s.”

That idea was a piece of vinyl that would fit around the bottom of the post and protect it from mowing and trimming, but it never moved beyond the concept stages. Until Kane and his sister grew up, bought houses of their own, and encountered similar problems with cedar fences. They reached out to their dad to see if he was interested in resurrecting the idea, and Post Shields was born. 

Well, sort of.

National Sale Leads to Incorporation

Like most entrepreneurial ventures, things got off to a slow start. Kane and Jennifer teamed up to buy a 3D printer, but creating the individual panels that connect together to form a square or circle around the post was a laborious process that took 3-4 hours per panel. They brought in a friend who did CAD drawings, another one familiar with plastic extrusion, bought a saw for cutting, and improved the efficiency enough to be able to create small production runs to get started. They’d already had some success selling on Amazon, but were ready to take things a step further. 

Next stop? The National Hardware Show. Ace Hardware liked their product and agreed to put it into their retail service centers nationwide. That’s when the Carmody siblings realized they had a small problem.

“We had just sold a product we didn’t have from a company that didn’t exist,” Kane recalls. They had to file vendor paperwork and incorporate, a process that took 7-8 months. They also needed office and warehouse space and signed a lease with Janesville’s Old Towne Mall. Despite the building’s historical appeal and cheap rent, the basement space wasn’t ideal for their growing business: semi trucks were dropping off 6-8 pallets in the street, and unpacking and carrying the boxes downstairs took an entire day with each shipment. 

Janesville Innovation Center Offers Perfect Solution

Fortunately, there was a solution. The Carmodys had met with Mike Matthews at the Janesville Innovation Center and he encouraged them to become a tenant there. The rent was higher than they had been paying at Old Towne Mall, but within a month the decision to relocate had already paid off.

“That month we had 20 pallets come in,” Kane says. “With pallet jacks and a dock, it took us 20 minutes versus at least a day at our old location.”

The Janesville Innovation Center offered plenty of additional benefits, from conference room space to the camaraderie between other tenants — startups like themselves, experiencing the same highs and lows that accompany any new business venture. Through it all, they found the mentorship required for success.

“Mike Matthews has been a wonderful guide for our business,” Kane shares. “Janesville Innovation Center is an amazing place that fosters healthy startup business growth. You have the absolute best possibility to grow your business there.”
If you’re interested in learning more about protecting fence and sign posts from damage, Post Shields’ website has a solution perfect for your needs. And if you’re a new company looking for a business incubator setting, check out Janesville Innovation Center.

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Five years since opening its doors to entrepreneurs in 2013, the Janesville Innovation Center will be self-sufficient this year after the city stopped subsidizing it in 2017, the center’s operations manager told the Janesville City Council on Monday.

Mike Mathews said the business incubator he manages at 2949 W. Venture Drive on the city’s south side is currently at capacity. Two current tenants are planning to leave, and others are lining up to fill those vacancies.

N1 Critical Technologies will soon finish its relocation to the former Red Cross service center at 211 N. Parker Drive in downtown Janesville.

Mathews said the company’s renovation of the building is a “must see.”

K4 Innovations will move to Edgerton, Mathews said.

Three potential tenants have emerged to replace those companies at the innovation center, he said.

“Fortunately, the demand for the space has timed well with the exit of some of our tenants,” Mathews said.

The city stopped subsidizing the center last year. The plan all along was to slowly decrease how much city money went into the center before cutting funding altogether.

“We’re surviving totally now on our rental income, which is a lot easier to do when you’re at 100 percent” capacity, Mathews said.

The center budgeted conservatively this year, but rental revenue this year will outpace expectations, he said. The center budgeted $124,000 in revenue and $110,000 in expenses for 2018.

The center has had a total of 13 tenants, seven of which occupy the center now.

Monthly rates to rent office suites that include utilities range from $275 to $465. Rates for manufacturing spaces range from $515 for 450 square feet to $2,185 for 4,200 square feet, according to the center’s website.

Councilman Jim Farrell asked if the rates are constant or if they’ve fluctuated. Mathews said they increase by about 3 percent annually.

http://www.gazettextra.com/news/business/janesville-innovation-center-continues-to-succeed

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Spitballing on the idea, Ellsworth’s partners at N1 dubbed the roving scooter, which would feature Ellsworth’s disembodied face, “Segway Guy” or “Segway Nate.”

“At least, that’s what we’d call it to its face,” N1’s Chief Financial Officer David Farrell said.

In an interview Tuesday, Ellsworth, Farrell and N1 Critical Technologies Director of Operations Matt Hess came off as both jocular and excited, and they have reason to be.

The partners say their 2-year-old company has grown by leaps and bounds in recent months, with N1 absorbing more and more of the space available at its home, the Janesville Innovation Center on the city’s south side.

Now, N1 is eyeing a move out of the Innovation Center, a local business incubator that Ellsworth said has been instrumental and “amazing” in helping the company launch and grow.

The company is planning a new product launch that Ellsworth said would make the company a true 21st-century innovator, and it would do that in a new location: the vacant former Red Cross service center at 211 N. Parker Drive in downtown Janesville.

N1 bought the 9,000-square-foot building in August for about $250,000, Ellsworth said.

In tandem with buying the new building, N1 has worked with a Chinese partner to develop and ready for market a new series of uninterrupted power supply (UPS) systems that would run on lithium-ion batteries, Ellsworth said.

UPS systems are used to protect computer systems and large electronic data and telecommunications centers from power interruptions that can damage equipment or lead to massive data loss.

Ellsworth said N1 would be the first IT company he knows of to customize and sell such systems with lithium-ion battery technology.

He said lithium technology would simplify and improve the way UPS systems are powered and create a new class of systems that could run up to five times longer compared to systems that use standard, lead-acid batteries similar to traditional car batteries.

As he spoke, Ellsworth, 34, adjusted a Milwaukee Brewers ball cap that topped his attire, which included a sport coat; an untucked, button-down shirt; fashion jeans; and cowboy boots.

“We’re the only one out there doing this. I haven’t slept in months, and all I can say is that I’m excited,”

Ellsworth, a Westfield native, said he decided to take N1 on a plunge into lithium ion after a revelation he had that was based at least in part on the battery technology in his own car, an electric Tesla Model S P90D.

As N1 plans to get its new digs in downtown Janesville renovated and move-in ready—possibly by the end of 2017—Ellsworth and his partners are set to unveil a new product line, which includes new racking systems and connection components.

The company could begin to build the units in Janesville soon, and Ellsworth and Hess said their company is hunting for a third facility where it could ramp up building UPS systems and racking equipment and store the products.

N1’s projects that in the next three or four months, it could begin to build 1,000 of the new systems along with the traditional systems it continues to sell, install and service.

Eventually, Ellsworth said, the company could grow to build and sell several thousand units a month, although it’s not clear how soon the company might dive into full manufacturing of the products yet. Some of the systems it customizes are built by other tech firms.

Now, N1 has sales offices and operations in several suites inside the Janesville Innovation Center, and a move downtown would allow the company to do hiring it needs to tackle an expansion and new product launch.

Under N1’s own projections, it could need to grow its employee base from 20 people to 30 or 40 within a couple of years, Ellsworth and Farrell said.

That hiring would largely be to handle accounts the company expects to gain through its regular business and its entree into lithium-ion-powered products. Ellsworth said N1 already has a national sales presence that includes business with Raytheon and Google.

Ellsworth said N1 liked the location of its future downtown headquarters, and he says its two-floor layout would allow the company to set up open-air sales office space, along with an operations, data and customer support center, while having leftover space to add some Silicon Valley-style flourishes.

Some ideas to that end include an adult-sized slide that would span both the building’s floors, a kitchen, gym and locker rooms, and a chill-out area where employees could play video games, race drones and relax.

N1 is also working on turning the building into a technology-smart facility with copious videoconferencing setups and a lobby equipped with a giant touch tablet that would allow visitors to electronically summon N1 officials.

“Every employee is going to get a hoverboard. It will be like a Willy Wonka factory come to life,” Ellsworth said

Ellsworth and Farrell said N1 is now working with the city of Janesville on a potential tax-incentive deal they said could help with an exterior facelift as the company makes re-use of a building downtown that has sat vacant for more than a year.

A rehab of the building’s interior could cost N1 $300,000 to $400,000, Ellsworth said. He said the idea is to gear the building to be N1’s corporate headquarters, regardless of where growth might take the company.

Farrell said despite what could be a tricky renovation project and exterior re-design, N1 so far views the city as an “ally” in the company’s plans to grow downtown.

Two maintenance workers at the Garden Court Apartments, which is adjacent to the former Red Cross building, were curious Tuesday about recent activity they’ve seen next door.

One of the men, who did not identify himself by name, was surprised to hear it was a local IT firm moving into the former Red Cross.

“It’s good to have a tech influence in downtown,” the man said. “Something like that … that’s Janesville moving forward.”

http://www.gazettextra.com/20170920/janesville_tech_firm_is_on_the_move

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