RichmondGRID.com: Ready Corporation

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AT THE CENTER OF IT ALL
Brothers Chris and Phil Ray have recently found themselves at the center of it all. As the owners of the newly opened Center of the Universe Brewing Company, the duo has morphed their hobby into one of the latest in a string of quality, craft breweries opening in Greater Richmond.

RETURN ON HEALTH:
THE HDL, INC. STORY
The recent success of Richmond-based Health Diagnostic Laboratory is not about any one person. It's about a family of people willing to roll up their sleeves and work around the clock for the past three years to save lives. It's representative of the spirit found by the many startups, organizations, and nonprofits in Greater Richmond who are dedicated to a cause worth fighting for. It's who we are.

GROWING UPWARD BY GOING SOUTHWARD
From his office in Shockoe Bottom, Edwin Huertas is building a growing base of clients that operate throughout Latin America. About one in five people south of the U.S. border own a smartphone (compared to one in two here), and as is the case in the U.S., iPhones and Androids have become the dominant handsets and continue to gain market share. That's a nice place to play if you're Huertas, an Ecuador native whose three-year-old company, Shockoe.com, happens to build applications for iPhones and Android devices.

LEADERSHIP LAB
Leadership Lab, a program created and cultivated by the Greater Richmond Chamber of Commerce, is designed to create individual development and relationship building for emerging leaders. Leaders who choose to apply to Leadership Lab are interested in increasing their lead and influence within their organizations or businesses.

SeedRVA: A COMMUNITY OF CONTRIBUTIONS
Those of us who keep a close eye on the business press see a lot of headlines about millions of dollars pouring into chosen startup companies, locally and around the country. And that's great. But we also know that for every growing company that needs a million-dollar boost, there are probably 25 scrappy founders and their teams who could get a lot done with $25,000.

ALL NATURAL, SPEARMINT-INFUSED SUCCESS
With the many offbeat ideas that could be hatched in a bar, Susan Martinson landed on a really good one.

FILLING A STADIUM, AND MORE
I remember sitting in Beaver Stadium in "Happy Valley" as the home of my alma mater is known. My blog, RichmondMom.com, was just a couple of years old and approaching 80,000 unique annual visitors and I thought, just 30,000 more and it would be as if all of my annual readers would fill this massive stadium.

MAKING RVA A BEER TOWN: THE HARDYWOOD STORY
After a decade-long quest, Patrick Murtaugh and I launched Hardywood Park Craft Brewery on Ownby Lane in Richmond in October 2011. The dream, which began with our first taste of handcrafted beer at an Australian farm bearing the name Hardywood Park, was driven by our desire to enlighten others about real craft beer. While our first months of business were an exhilarating adventure, 2012 was really a landmark year for Greater Richmond's beer scene.

ENJOY THE JOURNEY :THE BIORIDE STORY
When most people hear the word "grease," they think John Travolta. Well this story is far from the glamour of any "Summer Lovin'." My brother Joey Anderson and I were flipping hamburgers at your local burger joint and doing the ever-loved grease dumps when Joey came up with the idea of using waste cooking oil for fuel, but we didn't know what to do with it. After doing research, we found out it's recycled to make lipstick, other cosmetics, and biodiesel. That was when we were seniors in high school. I went off to college in Florida to pursue professional wakeboarding and a business management major while Joey stayed in Richmond to study advertising at Virginia Commonwealth University.

BIOTECH BOOM: LOCAL FIRM UNVEILS LIFE-SAVING PRODUCT
Nearly a decade of hard work is starting to pay off for Intelliject LLC. The Shockoe Slip biotech firm recently received federal approval of its epinephrine injection system, called Auvi-Q. When the device becomes available in November, people who suffer from severe reactions to shellfish, nuts, and other allergens will be able to use Auvi-Q to auto-inject a life-saving dose of epinephrine into their body. The company believes the device-credit card shaped and slightly smaller than a deck of playing cards-is easier to use and a more compact alternative to traditional injectors, epinephrine pens.

A BETTER WAY TO DO BUSINESS: B CORPORATIONS CHANGING OUR MARKETPLACE
Conscious consumers know that our local community is strengthened when they purchase goods and services from locally owned businesses. These actions support the local economy by ensuring that the money earned here is spent in our local marketplace and in turn, helps fund our community's tax base.

KimKim Korean Hot Sauce
"We're almost out of KimKim." Judging from the early performance of this new hot sauce, it's not hard to imagine a day when these words might prompt grocery store runs in households across the country.

Cudas Footwear : Making Great Strides in the Water Sports Market
Build a better water shoe and the world will beat a path (or swim or paddle) to your door. At least, that's what Cudas Footwear is hoping.

Celebrating Local Heroes
When the personal injury law firm of Allen, Allen, Allen & Allen hit 100 years old in 2010 the local business felt it was time to celebrate. Instead of baking a birthday cake and hanging streamers, the partners decided to focus on the community. The idea for an annual Hometown Heroes award was born, a campaign that continues today.

Push the Button, RVA: TechCrunch Digs Us
“Where am I, again?“ That was the feeling you got after walking into what appeared to be, at least on the outside, a standard office building in Henrico County's West End.

University of Richmond Student Nominated for "Do Something" Award
University of Richmond student, Manyang Reath, has been nominated as a semi-finalist in the 2012 “Do Something” awards for his non-profit organization, Humanity Helping Sudan Project.

Coworking in RVA Just Got Easier
"For today’s activity, everyone has to make a stencil and add a drawing to the poster.” Assuming you’re not an elementary school teacher, it’s unlikely that this sentence has ever been spoken in your office. If your response is to cast an awkward glance at the 5-foot dynamo making the suggestion, you’ve clearly never been educated on the world of coworking, 804Richmond-style.

FRONT MATTER

Innovators

Ready Corporation

These days there's a lot of hubbub over sustainable design in the residential market. But with 35 million Americans living in regions threatened by hurricanes, it's high time we introduce disaster recovery shelters into mainstream chatter.

7/27/2010 7:52:26 AM

Paul Spicer

Ready Corporation’s Executive Team: [l to r]: William Hancock, Lucius F. Cary IV, Matthew Duke, Carl Boggs, Bob Brown, Charlie Daniel and Stephen A. Storey.

Putting their disaster recovery shelters to the test, Hancock and company have traveled to Haiti extensively since its catastrophic earthquake.

"In the U.S., FEMA alone provides more than 15,000 disaster recovery shelters annually," says William Hancock, President and Chief Operating Officer at Ready Corporation. "Across the world millions more are threatened by the most destructive natural weather occurrences on Earth."

Hancock says Richmond- based Ready Corporation has an answer for the growing need for multi-purpose, field-assembled disaster relief units (for temporary and permanent use). As part of FEMA's Alternative Housing Program, Ready Corporation uses pre-engineered recycled steel and compressed agricultural fiber panels as principal components to its green building systems.

In layman's terms, these local leaders have found a way to use materials such as compressed wheat straw to crank out a product line including ReadyShelter, ReadySpace, ReadyCeiling, and ReadyHome. As one of the most affordable and spacious options on the market, Hancock points out that Ready Corporation's hardened units are not only ideal for disaster relief but also military structures and onsite worker housing.

A former transactional lawyer in the Richmond office of Troutman Sanders LLP for over three decades, Hancock and a growing cadre of Richmond's celebrated thinkers now run Ready Corporation from within the Troutman Sanders office. Fresh off of relief efforts in Haiti, the team is continuing to perfect its framing system with an emphasis on durability, flexibility and simplicity.

Boasting easy construction, Ready Shelter's product line is gaining a reputation for quick and safe assembly in the field using only small tools in less than 200 man-hours. Best of all, Ready Corporation's true differentiator is in its use of scalable, environmentally friendly materials that are pre-cut, flat packaged, and easily transported.

Putting their disaster recovery shelters to the test, Hancock and company have traveled to Haiti extensively since its catastrophic earthquake. Quickly proving to be a practical and sustainable option, the units are now being used throughout the Caribbean country with positive reports from the field.

"As our communities aspire to create a better future, we consider local and global perspectives, establish a foundation to aid progress, and meet the needs of the present without compromising the needs of the future," says Hancock.

Article from Issue #5