project for Prudential.
Company: Rhode Island Soft Systems/Mediaweave
Location: 68 Cumberland Street, Woonsocket
Web site: www.risoftsystems.com
Owner: Eric Robichaud
Employees: 24
Established: 1988
Annual sales: $1.5 million
Ask Eric Robichaud about how it all began, and he’ll tell you the truth.
Rhode Island's Market Has Changed. Developers, Builders, Investors and Sellers Must Change With It.
By Emilio DiSpirito IV License Partner | Engel & Völkers Oceanside Leader | The DiSpirito…
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“I didn’t have a clue what I was doing,” he said. “My wife thought I was completely crazy.”
With only $100, Robichaud founded Rhode Island Soft Systems in the couple’s living room, developing shareware products, while still working full-time as a programmer at the CVS corporate headquarters in Woonsocket.
“I did not make a dime for six months,” he said. “Then I got my first check for $10.”
By the end of the first year, Robichaud had made about $500 from his shareware; his third year’s annual earnings of $18,000 allowed him to quit his job at CVS and treat Rhode Island Soft Systems as a full-time pursuit.
“That was like walking off the edge of the Earth,” he said.
But from the beginning, Robichaud remained an optimist:
“My theory was ‘If I make more right decisions than I make wrong, it will all turn out okay in the end,'” he said.
Today, Rhode Island Soft Systems (RISS) boasts accounts with the New York Knicks, Prudential Insurance Company of America and Harley-Davidson motorcycles, for example. One of the company’s Web sites, screensaver.com, has a million unique visitors each month, Robichaud said.
After making its name doing screensavers (Macarena spoof “Hey, Macaroni!” is the company’s trademark screensaver) and interactive games and storybooks, RISS acquired Providence print graphics firm Mediaweave (originally founded by Janette Gagnon in the early 1980s) in 1999.
The acquisition allows RISS to offer clients traditional graphics services such as print ads.
“It provides additional depth in the things that we do,” Robichaud said. “The screensavers and games are very heavy into graphics, so it just made sense to do that.”
These days, if it’s a service electronic or graphic, it’s a safe bet RISS does it: interactive product CDs and presentations, trade show presentations, multimedia animation, online annual reports, corporate Web sites, online portfolios, and lobby and trade show displays.
Today, Robichaud describes his company as “an interdisciplinary group born from out of a highly technical, highly skilled programming team, merged with sort of a best-in-breed design group. Really what we’ve tried to do is find a niche and dominate the niche. We’ve tried to develop certain core competencies and be the best at those core competencies.”
Then Robich-aud heard that, after selling the photo lab portion of their business to Providence-based Abar Imaging last year, ImageMakers founders Chuck and Leslie Davis might be interested in selling their graphics business as well.
Robichaud had his lawyer make an inquiry.
“He got me that day,” Leslie Davis said. “I totally misunderstood his question. I thought he was interested in doing a project.”
“I wanted to see if there was any interest,” Robichaud said.
“We would have done this a long time ago,” said Chuck Davis of the sale that was finalized last month. “It was time to make a big change. We were thinking about finding someone to manage the place. We’ve been reluctant captains of the ship.”
After years at the ImageMakers helm, the Davises found themselves growing farther and farther away from what they love doing.
“We were the first in Rhode Island to bring in multi-projector slide services,” Leslie Davis said. “We started the business because we wanted to administer the product, but as the business grew, we never got to be the producers.”
“We could do slide animation,” said Chuck Davis, who explained that this feat was accomplished through aligning the projected images of anywhere from three to 16 rapid-fire slide projectors. Davis said the company did the special shows for corporate presentations, such as the launch of a new automobile.
“It was so exciting,” he said. “The audience would be wowed.”
ImageMakers adapted to new technology as it became available (the Davises said they remember buying an Apple II workstation for $40,000 in the early 1980s), and today do such presentations on digital projectors using laptop computers.
But Leslie said she is still partial to the real thing.
“I have a real love affair with the slide,” she said. “They have a clarity you can’t get on a computer. The image quality is greater than you’ve ever seen on a movie screen.”
Today the Davises, accompanied by seven of their ImageMakers staff, make the commute to Woonsocket as Web development specialists for Mediaweave. The couple said they feel positive about the new products and resources they now have to offer their customers.
“People get panicky about change, but we’re actually much more capable of serving them now,” Chuck Davis said.
Mediaweave and ImageMakers were direct competitors for nearly 20 years, but the companies’ new roles as collaborators makes sense to Leslie Davis.
“I think one of the things that Mediaweave brought to the table is some of the more traditional services,” she said. “Customers really do want a one-stop source for their needs.”
Woonsocket is home to only a handful of high tech companies, “but it doesn’t really matter,” Robichaud said.
RISS has clients all over the country. Robichaud said the company has never met their collaborators at Prudential face-to-face; RISS worked with a Los Angeles company for a year before they met in person.
Robichaud estimated that 80 to 85 percent of his company’s sales are conducted electronically.
Despite the relatively small number of high tech companies in the area, Robichaud said he has mixed feelings about the Rhode Island Technology Council’s efforts to recruit technology companies to the state.
“I’ve been saying for years that you have to plant here if you want an industry here,” he said. “I think the people from the governor’s office and the EDC (Economic Development Corporation) on down have finally seen the light. It’s (the technology industry in Rhode Island) still in its infancy, but it’s light years ahead of where it was 10 or 15 years ago.”
Still, citing added competition, Robichaud said: “Why would I get excited about Mass Exodus?”(the advertising campaign urging Massachusetts companies to move to Rhode Island)
But Robichaud is confident in the abilities of his team.
“Looking around the state, I feel very confident that we do top quality work,” he said. “We try to take groups like that and bring them together. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find in the state of Rhode Island someone who really has a total solution. We don’t just make your Web sites look good, we make them work right.”
