Promoting Excellence in Small Business

Two of the eleven winners of the Chamber’s 2009 Excellence Awards Honoring Small Businesses are featured in this issue: Family Business of the Year, FixtureOne, and Green Business of the Year, MWAY. Be sure to look for additional winners in upcoming issues. Nominations for the 2010 Excellence Awards will be accepted starting in April.

Family Business of the Year, FixtureOne

FixtureOne Corporation is a Philadelphia based small business specializing in the design and production of custom store fixtures and furnishings for the retail industry. Serving clients throughout the U.S and Canada, FixtureOne combines 60 years of executive retail management experience with 40 years of store fixture manufacturing to provide turnkey solutions for their retail clients.

FixtureOne was founded under the name of P.O.P. Stores Fixtures in 1967. In 2004, Kenneth Schutz purchased the company from his father, Dennis Schutz, and his two business partners. In order to rebrand the company, he changed the name to FixtureOne in 2006. Schutz graduated from Lycoming College in 1988 and started working for his father’s company as operations manager. He became vice president of the company in 1998, president in 2004, and CEO in 2005.

Under Kenneth’s leadership, FixtureOne has increased its revenues by 250% over the past four years by opening two new plants and implementing new sales and marketing programs. FixtureOne manufacturers store fixtures for specialty and luxury retailers, department stores, discount stores, and outlet stores. The company helps retailers compete in today’s competitive marketplace by providing them with solutions via their design, sales, customer support and project teams; and through its production capabilities of multiple materials including wood, metal and polymers.

FixtureOne employs 95 Philadelphia area residents. Most of its workforce joined the company with no skills or training. They learn on the job as apprentices and most have enjoyed long careers within the company working up to highly skilled craftsmen and custom cabinet and furniture makers. Schutz credits his dedicated staff for providing the essential elements that have advanced the company by creating rewarding relationships with their clients.

Green Business of the Year, MWAY

In 2006, grassroots entrepreneur Robert Marino founded Mway Technical Services to focus on green technology at the industrial level. Mway designs and manufactures engine exhaust pollution control catalysts and catalytic muffler products for engine makers and indoor powered equipment manufacturers.

Marino did not know that joining other curious students at “Earth Day” rallies in the early 1970s would be the start of a life-long career. By the mid ‘70s, he was working for an upstart testing laboratory, where he field tested emissions from industrial sources such as factory smoke stacks and participated in laboratory research testing of early alternative fueled vehicles.

In 1981, Marino became a partner in a business venture that offered laboratory-testing services, pollution control solutions and alternative fueled vehicle services. After selling the company in 2001, he continued working as the acting chief technology officer until 2006. An advocate for green manufacturing practices, he devised a 100% water recycling system for the company’s catalyst process manufacturing group.

Marino continued to design and patent new pollution technologies, including the first diesel catalytic converter that could eliminate diesel engine pollution by more than 50%. Marino conceived the idea of Mway Technical Services as a way to continue to carve a path for green technology at the industrial level.

Mway offers a suite of specialized pollution control catalysts for small engines plus certification testing and compliance consulting services to the manufacturing industry. Mway’s products and services make it possible for companies to focus on their core business and offerings of green consumer products to end-users.

Mway is comprised of a core group of four professionals who work with a network of professional consulting engineers, and outsource manufacturing partnerships. Mway successfully leverages internal and eternal expert resources to provide important green products and services for its clients.

Click here for more information on the Excellence Awards.