PGA Marketing By David Nathans
New Life for Internet Yellow Pages?
Corrections or additions?
These articles by Barbara Fox were prepared for the July 11, 2001
edition of U.S.
1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
On the Move
On Friday, July 13 — flaunting superstition —
the area’s Federal Express depot will move from Sloan Avenue to 70,000
square feet at 20 Thomas J. Rhodes Industrial Drive — a space
that is nearly three times bigger. “We had the opportunity to
get a bigger location that gives us more flexibility and the ability
to expand if we need to,” says a spokesperson.
With 170 employees, this depot covers seven counties, from Stockton
to Maguire, from the shore to the Pennsylvania border, yet Fed Ex
has a dozen other locations in New Jersey. Friday is a transition
day, and the first full day of operation will be Saturday, July 14.
For those who count on driving their packages directly to the Fed
Ex depot to squeeze the last few minutes out of the work day, here
are the directions to Thomas H. Rhodes Industrial Drive: From Route
1 South, Quakerbridge Road and turn right on Quakerbridge Plaza Drive,
then right on Thomas Rhodes Industrial Drive. Or from I-295 take the
Sloan Avenue exit east and turn left on Quakerbridge Road. Take the
next left on Quakerbridge Plaza and right on Thomas Rhodes Industrial
Drive.
Federal Express, 20 Thomas J. Rhodes IndustrialDrive, Mercerville 08619. 800-238-5355; fax, 800-548-3020.Www.fedex.comTop Of PageFranks’ New JobHealthCare Institute of New Jersey, 391 GeorgeStreet, New Brunswick 08901. Bob Franks, president. 732-227-2000;fax, 732-342-8449. Www.hinj.orgBob Franks, former New Jersey Congressman and former Republicancandidatefor the governor of New Jersey, replaces William H. Tremayne, whois retiring as president of the association of pharmaceutical andmedical technology companies.”With his significant political experience,” says RaymondV. Gilmartin, CEO of Merck and chairman of the institute, “Bobis an expert at elevating public understanding of complex issues.Considering the major impact that our industry has on the state, itis critical that New Jerseyans have a solid understanding of whatwe do.”The 20-company organization aims to raise visibility of research-basedpharmaceutical and medical device industry.Franks went to DePauw University and has a law degree from SouthernMethodist University. In January he completed four consecutive termsas Congressman for the state’s Seventh District, which includes partsof Somerset and Middlesex counties.Top Of PagePGA Marketing By David NathansIn July David Nathans changed addresses within the 195Nassau Court complex. He bills his firm as a sales and marketingconsultingfirm specializing in financial services and start-ups, but he hasan interesting connection to the PGA Tour.As part of the advertising and marketing services side of hisbusiness,Nathans has, as a major client, the Enterprise Group of Funds, anationalmutual fund company. He manages its trade and consumer advertisingas well as such promotional programs as an exhibit in a tent on thePGA Tour known as the Bloomberg Expo Village. Enterprise is the onlymutual fund represented in the Bloomberg Expo Village tent.At five PGA tournament sites his client also awards scholarships —a total of 10 $2,500 scholarships. Applications come in from highschool seniors who live within a 100-mile radius of the event andare connected in some way with golf — either they play golf orwork at a golf course or retail store. A Trenton-based golfprofessional,Dennis Milnee, and his wife, Bobbie, read all the applications andgrade and score them for the first cut. Todd Lincoln, founder of theFamily Golf Association and marketing director of Glenmede TrustCompanyof New Jersey on Chambers Street, is on the three-person finalselectioncommittee. Lincoln had helped Nathans develop the scholarship program.”This is the first year for both of these experiences, andhopefullyboth will continue and expand,” says Nathans. The second partof his business is working with start-up companies on planning andmarketing. He helped write the business plan for the highly successfulPrinceton Learning Systems (founded by William Healy and StephenHaase).He brought in an angel investor who earned a triple digit return inless than a year when PLS was sold to Yipinet. Nathans says that helimits his money placements — connecting investors with companies— to three or four per year.David Nathans grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts, where his fatherwas a physician and nursing home administrator. He went to HamiltonCollege, Class of 1972, and earned an MBA from Wharton. He servedas assistant director of the Art Museum of Princeton University in1980 and ’81 and did stints at Ogilvy Mather in Manhattan and a smalladvertising agency in Springfield.Nathans moved back to Princeton to be with his future wife, Katherine,and they now have a nine-year-old son and four-year-old daughter.He helped her open a Palmer Square retail store, Biarritz, beforejoining Merrill Lynch to run advertising and marketing services. From1994 to 1997 he was at Princeton Capital Management on Terhune Street,and then he founded his firm and named it — not for the city inAustralia, but for his late father. Says Nathans: “He would haveloved to see me in business on my own.”The Sydney Company, 195 Nassau Street, Suite 7,Princeton 08542. David Nathans, principal. 609-924-2756; fax,609-924-7188.Top Of PageNo. 2 TigerA few years ago the appointment of a woman as PrincetonUniversity’s provost, the number two position at the Ivy Leaguecollege,would have been big news. Now it’s less remarkable. Princeton’s newpresident, Shirley Tilghman, has given the provost’s job to AmyGuttman,making her the university’s second-ranking officer. Guttman was thefounding director of the University Center for Human Values and hasbeen teaching politics at Princeton since 1976.An alumna of Radcliffe College (now Harvard), Guttman has a master’sdegree from the London School of Economics and a PhD from Harvard.Her husband, Michael W. Doyle, teaches politics and internationalaffairs at Princeton. He is on sabbatical to serve as assistantsecretary-generaland special advisor to the secretary-general at the United Nations.Princeton University, 1 Nassau Hall, Princeton08544. Shirley Tilghman, president. 609-258-3000; fax,609-258-1294.Www.princeton.edu.Top Of PageNew Life for Internet Yellow Pages?When the Internet was new and anyone would believeanything,local business to business websites were hot. Now they are a toughsell. Now it’s easier to find good B to B contacts in the telephonebook than on a website. But Swapan Nandy of RGB Computers at 20 Nassauthinks he has the answer.Nandy is counting on the fact that there are 9,000 businesses inMercerCounty and that they will want to do business with each other by usinghis website (www.Bizex.org). Businesses that are three years oldor more (and therefore reputable) can pay $85 to be listed on hiswebsite.”Nobody is doing this business model because it is not an easyconcept,” says Nandy. “People were trying to make easy money,but no one analyzed what the small businesses would pay.” Hisbusiness plan calls for signing up 1,000 businesses in the first year,and he says he has signed up 40 so far. “This is not the breadand butter of my business, just an avenue to come up with a uniqueconcept, finding new ways of using the Internet.”Though he claims his is the first local website for Mercer County,several up-and-running websites for the Princeton area (as opposedto specifically Mercer County) feature Mercer County businessesprominently.And Nandy is happy to take Plainsboro businesses. In other words,he’s really going for “Princeton area” as well.After study at the London College of Printing and graduation fromthe Institute of Printing Technology in Calcutta, Nandy went intohigh-end graphics separation. He turned down a chance to work forthe New York Times in its 1996 transition from black and white tocolor because the location was so far away and required shift work.Instead, he started his own computer company, doing systemsintegration,hardware and software support, custom database and web page designand testing, and Internet and online store creation services.A deterrent to B to B success in 1995 and 1996, when everyone wasrushing to make money by listing businesses on websites, was thelack of a useful search engine that could work inside the web pages.Nandy says that Microsoft ASP active server pages, using Access asa database, solves that problem. “This time of the Internet islike the ’40s in the auto industry. This is the right era we arein.”RGB Computers Inc., 20 Nassau Street, Suite 413,Princeton 0854. Swapan Nandy, owner. 609-683-5510; fax, 609-683-3720.Home page: www.rgbcomputer.comTop Of PageExpansionsAssist America, 1 Palmer Square, Suite 315,Princeton08542. George Howard, president. 609-921-0868; fax, 609-921-0933.In June Assist America opened an additional office in 2,500 squarefeet at Lawrence Commons. Barry Blackwell of Commercial PropertyNetworkrepresented both the tenant and the landlord, Manhattan-based RegentManagement. The company coordinates medical benefits for groupinsurancecompanies and will retain its Palmer Square office.Taylor, Wiseman & Taylor, 2007 Eastpark Boulevard,Cranbury 08512. Gary Vecchio, regional manager. 609-655-9525; fax,609-655-4656. Www.twt.comThe Mt. Laurel-based civil engineering and surveying firm moved inMay from 3,100 square feet at 2088 Route 130 to 3,500 feet at Eastpark8A. Phone and fax are new. Bill Barish of Commercial Property Networkrepresented the tenant, and Bob Acosta represented the landlord,EasternProperties. Among the firm’s current clients is Renaissance, aresidentialdevelopment in North Brunswick.Tracer Research, 1583 Livingston Avenue, NorthBrunswick 08902. Marjorie Stivers, manager. 732-220-8757; fax,732-220-9002.Www.tracerresearch.comThe environmental engineering firm made its move from PrincetonCorporatePlaza to 5,000 square feet in North Brunswick (U.S. 1, June 13). Phoneand fax are new, but the toll free number remains the same(800-303-4523).It specializes in soil gas surveys and patented precision leakdetectionfor above ground, underground tanks and pipelines.Top Of PageCrosstown MovesFederal Mortgage Company (FMC), 258 Wall Street,Princeton 08540. Ehab Abousabe, president. 609-924-8866; fax,609-924-0126.Home page: www.FMC-Corp.comThe mortgage company changed from a Skillman to a Princeton addresswith a move from the Village Shopper retail center on Route 206 toResearch Park.Deloitte & Touche LLP, 117 Campus Drive, UniversitySquare, Princeton 08540. Andrew Moss, managing partner. 609-520-2300;fax, 609-520-2413.The office of the accounting and software firm has closed on VillageBoulevard in Forrestal Village and those personnel have been movedto Campus Drive. Word is that the firm expects to move again, to anas-yet-not-named office in Princeton within the year. The managementconsulting firm, named Deloitte Consulting, retains its office onState Street in Trenton and is based in Parsippany.Top Of PageName ChangesFRx (ebudgets.com)(MSFT), 666 Plainsboro Road,Suite 1236, Plainsboro 08536. Kenneth Kay, president. 609-275-9416;fax, 609-275-6512. Home page: www.ebudgets.comWhen ebudgets.com was sold to FRx (a Denver-based subsidiary of GreatPlains Software), it was told it could keep its name. But now theFRx sign has gone up at Princeton Meadows Office Center. It seemsthat another firm had dibs on a too-similar name, and the Microsoftlawyers were worried about the confusion.Microsoft? Yes, Kenneth Kay’s 19-person company is now officiallypart of the Microsoft family. Microsoft bought Great Plains Softwareon April 5. Kenneth Kay sold his company (known in the early daysas the Helmsman Group) just under $8 million in what is now Microsoftstock.Top Of PageDeathsGerald L. Geison , 58, on July 2. He was a professor inPrinceton University’s history department and the Program in Historyof Science.Robert C. Marince , 76, on July 4. He had been directorof music education in with Lawrence schools.Charles Neider , 86, on July 4. A noted Mark Twain scholar,he also wrote critically acclaimed books documenting three trips hemade to Antarctica.Judith Trachtenberg , 52, on July 6. She was an attorneywith the Center for Non-Profit Corporations.Next StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
