Corrections or additions?
These Life in the Fast Lane articles by Melinda Sherwood and Barbara Fox were published in U.S. 1 Newspaper on July
21,
1999. All rights reserved.
The Company Store: Commerce Enablement Services
When it comes to E-commerce, better try before you
buy, says Thomas Fitzgerald, founder of Commerce Enablement Services
in Kendall Park. Fitzgerald, who helped build Chase Manhattan Bank’s
first Internet payment service, has E-commerce solutions for such
clients as Peterson’s Publishing, Caldor, and Symbol Technologies,
but he also targets small businesses.
“E-commerce is widely touted as requiring at least a million dollars
a year to be done effectively,” says Fitzgerald. But before stepping
up to such a commitment, “a small business has every right and
obligation to test the waters.” He has just launched an online
store that any business, retail or otherwise, can put on its web page.
Fitzgerald received a BS in finance from Fairfield University, Class
of 1992, and spent five years at Chase Manhattan Bank, where he worked
on the company’s electronic corporate payment services and eventually
gravitated toward business development. He founded the firm in the
spring of 1998 and moved the seven-person firm to Allston Road earlier
this year.
The online store is a turnkey business. “All we need is the logo,
and CES provides the fulfillment solutions,” says Mike Rondelli,
marketing manager. If you make widgets, for instance, you put up a
notice on your website that purchasing managers can obtain a free
widget-logoed T-shirt. CES takes your logo, gets T-shirts made, logs
in the orders, sends out the T-shirts, and — perhaps most important
— gives you a summary of the client information collected.
Don’t think you will be making money with this web endeavor. “The
goal of this is purely as a promotional item, not as a revenue generating
stream for the client company. To use it as a revenue generating stream
would require a different business plan,” says Rondelli. “No
one else is doing what we are doing,” he adds. “We take your
logo and you choose the apparel item.”
In other words, you will be giving away promotional items in exchange
for potentially valuable information. Rondelli does not disclose CES’s
fulfillment partner nor the transaction protocol.
Fitzgerald wants both big companies and emerging start-ups as clients.
“Start-ups tend to be small but they’re well funded and their
primary focus is E-commerce,” he says. “Sometimes they’re
trying to do something that’s kind of out of the box.” These are
the small clients he wants, not those that buy shrink-wrapped packages.
“The $50 product is not our market, but for someone making the
serious investment, we provide services that go beyond that.”
Large clients, on the other hand, work with the company for a longer
period of time to customize their solutions. “It’s more value-added
to the company,” he says. For Peterson’s, CES put together a commerce-enabled
online catalog for buying books. For the now bankrupt Caldor, CES
created an online print circular, not just with scanned images, but
interactive, so the viewer could pull up sizes and descriptions. “We
got them into and through the holiday season,” says Rondelli.
CES is also branching out into consulting. The director of the consultant
side of the business, Rupert Bader, previously worked for Towers Perrin
and KPMG.
“If you already have a website, that’s great,” says Rondelli.
“It’s a good start. But think again: Who is supposed to look at
this page? How are they supposed to access it? Is it supported by
your other marketing campaigns — print, radio, catalog, and your
business card?”
Commerce Enablement Services, 5 Allston Road, KendallPark 08824. Thomas Fitzgerald, managing director. 732-398-3994; fax,732-398-3997. Home page: https://www.enablement.com.Top Of PageMac HelpersMacTech, 38 Horner Lane, Princeton 08540. JereMyrick, partner. 609-921-3436.For Macintosh owners: Jere Myrick and Kelly Foris have purchased MacTechfrom Scott Mielentz, who has moved to Florida. “We were both servicinga small group of artists who use the Macintosh when we heard aboutthis opportunity,” says Myrick.Myrick is a native of West Windsor, where her father was a processengineer for General Motors and her mother a legal secretary. An artistwho works on the computer as well as in colored pencil, she sellsher science fiction and fantasy prints at science fiction conventions.She also has undergraduate and master’s degrees in audio engineeringfrom American University, Class of 1981.The pair provide services for Macintosh computers — repairs, networking,training, site development, and connectivity. They bought Mielentz’sclient list and transferred the telephone number for Mielentz’s locationin Hightstown and opened for business last week.Top Of PageMatsushita MorphMorph yourself and your prospective mate to see whoyour children would resemble. Or see what how you would look as agorilla. This is the premise for American Alpha, which launched afully-automated real-time photo attraction four years ago (U.S. 1,June 17, 1995). It is doubling in size, taking over 10,000 feet intwo Stouts Lane suites formerly occupied by Dow Jones.To have your face melded with the human or animal of your dreams,step into the Foto Morphosis booth and your photo is snapped, mapped,and superimposed over another picture in three dimensions. Rich Figuerora,operations manager, says the booths can gross from $500 to $1,000per day at $5 per shot.Matsushita originally developed the software and hardware, which hasbeen crammed into a booth and made to look snazzy for public consumption.The computer does the morph by taking 49 points on your face aroundthe eyes, nose, eyebrows, and mouth, and then blending them with whateverelse is in the computer. Then the booth was brought overseas and taughthow to recognize ethnic facial structures by American Alpha, a processthat took almost two years.Now American Alpha leases the booths to a mall or amusement park .It has 90 machines at such high volume locations as Jillian’s in FranklinMills mall, all Gameworks locations, and at Ripley’s Believe It OrNot museums.American Alpha Inc., 45 Stouts Lane, Suite 8, MonmouthJunction 08852. Sming Huang, president. 732-438-0420; fax, 732-438-0424.Top Of PageRecruiting: PlasticsPlastics was the watchword for the character that DustinHoffman played in the 1960s movie “The Graduate.” And plasticshas been the core of Richard Strenkowski’s manufacturing career. Nowhe has opened a Management Recruiters office, and he will do executivesearch for plastics manufacturers.Strenkowski grew up in Bloomfield, where his father was a detective,majored in food science at Clemson, Class of 1966, and has an MBAfrom Fairleigh Dickinson. He worked in the packaging industry forAmerican Can Co., most recently as managing director of marketing,and was president and CEO of Sunbeam Plastics, which specialized inchild resistant closures and went from being a $22 million companyto a $50 million company in five years. In Piscataway he ran LawsonMarden, makers of thermo-formed plastic trays for frozen food.With 1,000 independent franchisees (200 in Europe), Management Recruitersis the largest recruiting company in the world. Each has a specialty.For instance, the branch on Princeton-Hightstown Road, (see accompanyingstory) focuses on retail jobs. Strenkowski hopes to build an operationthat will staff local manufacturing plants in any industry.Management Recruiters works on split fees and referral commissions.Job seekers pay nothing. “If I can’t help you I can use the inter-officereferral system,” says Strenkowski. He might, in fact, give youa job himself; he plans to hire two recruiters.Management Recruiters of Montgomery (MRI), 814Executive Drive, Princeton 08540. Richard Strenkowski, owner. 609-497-4550;fax, 609-497-4551. Home page: https://www.mrinet.comTop Of PageRecruiting: RetailTwo years after he opened a Management Recruiters officein the Dataram complex, Robert Walling has doubled his 700-square-footspace and now has six employees. “We work with some of the majorretailers,” says Walling, “in retail operations and also inthe warehousing and distribution.” He fills jobs that start at$40,000 — district managers, buyers, allocators, and planners.A business major at University of Iowa, Class of 1965, Walling hada 30-year retail career in Kinney Shoes, Susie’s Casual, and the Kidsdivision of Footlocker.Each franchisee builds his or her own database of potential recruits,says Walling, and he has a powerful database in his field, with 300to 400 executives at almost every major retailer. Though the jobsand the recruits are located anywhere in the nation, he does littletravel and does 98 percent of his work on the telephone, usually tocall people who are currently employed. “Most people are not lookingto change jobs.”Management Recruiters International of West Windsor,186 Princeton-Hightstown Road, Building 3B, Cranbury 08512. RobertWalling, owner. 609-897-0055; fax, 609-897-0099.Top Of PageContracts AwardedFour Phase I Small Business Innovation Research grants,worth $400,000 have been awarded to three central New Jersey firms:Envirogen, ML Energia, and Princeton Electronic Systems. The SBIRprogram aims to help small firms commercialize research and developmentefforts. The Phase I grants are to support feasibility studies. Nextyear these same firms can compete for Phase II grants.Envirogen has a grant worth $100,000 to develop technology for cleaningin-ground heavy metal contamination. Envirogen does toxic and hazardouswaste cleanup, bioremediation technology R&D, vapor extraction systems,and on-site removal of organic contaminants.ML Energia received one of its $100,000 grants for a project on balloonsensors that measure water vapor. The second grant is for a real-timemonitoring device to measure plasma temperature in fusion reactionresearch. It does research and development in environmental remediation,optical diagnostics, combustion, laser ignition and photochemicalprocesses.Princeton Electronic Systems also received money from the energy department– a $99,990 SBIR grant for low-cost optical links for high speedcomputer networks. These networks have both scientific and commercialuse. The firm works on products for chemical and nuclear detection,video communications, voltage controlled oscillators, and R&D forother electronic components.Envirogen (ENVG), 4100 Quakerbridge Road, Lawsrenceville08648. 609-936-9300. Home page: https://www.envirogen.com.ML Energia Inc., Schalks Crossing Road, IRL Building,Box 470, Princeton 08542. 609-799-7970.Princeton Electronic Systems, 196 Princeton-HightstownRoad, Box 8627, Princeton 08540. 609-275-6500. Home page: https://www.pesinc.com.Top Of PageDeathsJohan Christiaan Beker, 75, on July 12. He was professorof new testament theology at Princeton Theological Seminary.William Warren Young, 61, on July 13. He was a designerfor Demag Delaval Co.Helen Martha Hansen, 73, on July 13. Until 1997 she workedat Princeton University’s social science reference center.Previous StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
