Earlier this year, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce surveyed its members to look back on 2019 and identify what set their companies apart heading into a year suddenly defined by social distancing, lockdowns and economic uncertainty. From those applications, a volunteer panel of local business leaders graded entries on business operations, financial positioning, innovation, entrepreneurship, market strategy and community involvement to select finalists for the chamber’s 2020 Small Business of the Year award.
The chamber named three finalists: Calagaz Printing, JJPR Agency and WaveFly, powered by JMF Solutions. The winner was set to be announced Thursday, Aug. 20.
Calagaz Printing, founded locally nearly 30 years ago in 1991, employs 18 people at its office on Mill Street in Mobile under president Joe Calagaz. The full-service commercial print shop supplies materials, signage and apparel to local businesses and has built a niche serving the national restaurant industry. Earlier in 2020, as its usual print production dropped to zero amid the pandemic, the company made local headlines by pivoting to manufacture more than 180,000 face shields — a shift that kept its existing staff employed, preserved some revenue and helped meet urgent community demand for protective equipment during the public health crisis.
JJPR Agency, based in Daphne, serves midsized companies, nonprofits and the occasional larger client from its office on Friendship Road. Founded in 2010, the boutique public relations firm has grown from a single-account startup to a team of 10 employees under founder and president Jennifer Jenkins, who has built a public profile of her own through podcast appearances, lifestyle-magazine features and contributed articles. The firm has also been recognized repeatedly by local readers as a top marketing and events company in the region’s annual awards.
WaveFly, powered by JMF Solutions, is the largest employer among the three finalists, with 42 people on its payroll. The telecommunications company operates its own broadband network along with multiple data centers and offices across the country, providing managed network services — including fiber, cloud, VoIP and IPTV streaming — to clients in residential communities, health care, banking and industrial sectors. Its parent company, JMF Solutions, was recognized in 2018 on the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in America (No. 2,593) and was named to the CRN Fast Growth 150 list for channel technology providers in 2016.
The Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce, the economic development arm for the city of Mobile and Mobile County, represents more than 1,800 member businesses collectively employing upward of 98,000 people. The Small Business of the Year distinction is one of the chamber’s most prominent annual recognitions of locally owned companies navigating a difficult operating environment, and this year’s finalist pool underscored how differently three very different sectors — commercial printing, public relations and telecommunications — adapted to the pandemic’s disruptions.