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2006 EIC Award Winners
Notable Accomplishment(s): Formed collaborative team to understand, leverage and extend federal policies toward veteran owned businesses while establishing productive teams for federal business opportunities.
 VOB108 was formed in 2006 and describe themselves in this way: [we] “began as a ‘lunch bunch’; a group of veteran and service disabled veteran owned small businesses meeting to share ideas, energy and lessons learned in our individual efforts to target and win federal contracts.”
VOB108 is made up of member companies that are veteran and/or service disabled veteran owned small businesses. By establishing a working team, the group can more effectively consider potential government opportunities and respond to them quickly. Because the member companies cover a broad spectrum of industries (including custom manufacturing, mail services, webpage development, marketing and others), they are able to handle larger contracts as a group than any individual company could on its own. This teaming strategy is an incredible example of the kind of teaming and creative thinking that government buyers want to see from small businesses. It is also the reason we have chosen to award the Dayton EIC Award to VOB108.
Notable Accomplishment(s): Joint Venture with Jack Gibson Construction on $7.4M project at Youngstown Air Reserve, Mentor-Protégé relationship with Icon Construction of Dayton, OH, and partnership with Barlovento, LLC in Alabama – an 8(a), woman-owned company
 Better Built Construction is a woman owned small business, owned and operated by Karen Halsey.
Better Built Construction piqued our interest with this comment, “For the purposes of this [EIC] nomination we attempted to separate the categories of inspiration and collaboration with little success. It has been our experience that as we have sought out avenues of collaboration through various means, we have found inspiration in the process. Each [activity] we participated in has proven not only to be a helpful marketing tool but a wonderful way to pull from the experience and knowledge-base represented by other ‘like’ businesses.”
Better Built exhibits a solid understanding of the importance of learning from others as you develop your business. Karen has led her organization to partner with other companies, develop a mentor-protégé relationship and repeatedly position itself to learn from others. This impressive attitude and the success that has come from it are the reasons we’ve chosen to award the Cincinnati EIC Award to Better Built Construction.
Notable Accomplishment(s): Top 20% rating with Open Ratings, 6 US patents, Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, SBA National Business Person of the Year
 UniKeep, LLC was founded by Ross Youngs, entrepreneur and inventor of environmentally friendly office products. In a time of rapidly declining manufacturing in the US, Ross has worked extensively to bring job opportunities and continued innovation to Ohio’s manufacturing landscape.
Three of the company’s most outstanding achievements are the invention of products that are revolutionizing manufacturing. DarkWeld technology is a cold process technology that bonds layers of polypropylene with an extremely durable weld; the UniKeep binder is a fully enclosed three-ring binder designed to be single injection molded, rings included; and the Safety-sleeve is an environmentally friendly protective disc sleeve with a wide range of consumer and commercial packaging applications.
In addition to the company’s successes in developing new, eco-friendly products, UniKeep is forming a collaborative group that joins central ohio companies for the purposes of pursuing government contracts. As the leader of this collaborative team, UniKeep is reaching out to other small businesses to share knowledge and experience. For all of these efforts, we are pleased to award the Columbus EIC Award to UniKeep, LLC. |
