Sunday, January 31, 2010
The company expects to double its staff in the next five years.
By DON SHILLING
VINDICATOR BUSINESS EDITOR
CANFIELD — The explosion in credit-card transactions has fueled growth for a local company that just bought a new office for its headquarters.
FiNet provides the equipment and services that allow nearly 8,000 businesses in 34 states to accept credit cards from their customers.
The Canfield company used to work primarily with jewelry stores, grocers and other retailers, but its customer base has expanded, said Rick Camardo, company founder and president.
Businesses now require suppliers to use credit cards, which opened up a huge field of business-to-business transactions, he said. Also, government offices now accept cards for payments, as do utilities.
“It’s a plastic world out there, fortunately,” Camardo said.
FiNet’s revenue grew 62 percent last year, and Camardo is expecting a 30 percent increase this year.
The company recently added two workers, which gives it a staff of 19 full-time workers and one part-time worker in a rented office on Seville Drive.
FiNet is growing so fast that it just bought a 10,000-square-foot building at 7355 California Ave., across from the Southern Park Mall in Boardman.
Camardo figures the building could handle 100 employees, not that he expects FiNet to get that big. He is projecting the business will have between 40 and 50 employees in five years, but he doesn’t mind being ready for larger growth.
Camardo expects to relocate in April, after some renovations are done. The building used to house medical offices.
Camardo worked with Kutlick Realty to buy the building for $530,000. The previous owner bought it for $790,700 in 1990.
There is more to FiNet’s growth, however, than an increased use of credit cards.
The company has been successful in building its roster of clients, which are banks and credit unions. Rather than marketing its services directly to retailers and others who use credit cards, FiNet is hired by financial institutions to work with their business clients.
FiNet has been adding 10 to 15 banks a year and now has 135 financial institutions in 15 states. Among its customers are Home Savings and Loan Co., Farmers Bank, Cortland Bank and First National Bank of Pennsylvania.
Camardo said the growth has come because FiNet has been endorsed by community banking associations in Ohio and Michigan and because bankers who transfer from one organization to another often bring Finet to their new bank.
He said FiNet has succeeded because it has created a business model that matched the needs of community banks. These banks market themselves as providers of customer service and personal relationships, and they like FiNet because it offers the same commitment, he said.
All of FiNet’s customers are assigned specific employees to call at FiNet if they have a problem, he said.
“We build rapport on a first-name basis. They get to know the person they are working with,” he said.
FiNet provides the terminals that businesses use to accept credit cards, and it adjusts software to fit the needs of each business.
FiNet also watches for fraudulent transactions. Systems, which are required by Visa and Mastercard, examine the dollar amounts and numbers of transactions so businesses can be alerted for possible fraud.
Businesses call FiNet with any questions about transactions because it maintains a record of all the data produced.
FiNet doesn’t actually handle the money involved in the transactions. That is handled by a credit-card processor, and FiNet works with four of them.
Camardo, 51, of Canfield, ended up in the credit business by accident.
A graduate of Liberty High School and Youngstown State University, he was working for the former Society Bank in the collections department in 1986. And he hated it.
Turned off by making calls to people who were behind in payments, Camardo was eager to volunteer when Society said it was starting a merchant-services department.
“I didn’t know what that meant. They could have said, ‘Who wants to be a janitor?’ and I would have raised my hand,” he said.
Merchant services included setting up credit-card systems for the bank’s business customers, and Camardo found that he loved the work.
He later moved on to another area of the bank, but in 1991 he decided to go out on his own and create his own company to set up credit- card systems.
He credited his late father, Bob Camardo Sr., for giving him an entrepreneurial spirit. His father used to own the Esquire Barber Shop and Edwardo Beauty Shop chains, which had 15 locations.
The FiNet founder marketed his services to area businesses until 1993 when the former Second National Bank in Warren approached him about taking over its merchant-services operation. Camardo accepted the work, and within a couple of years, he was accepting work only through financial institutions.
The outsourcing of merchant services quickly became a trend, and Camardo said about 90 percent of banks now rely on outside providers.
“We happened to be at the right place and the right time, and Second National helped us see our niche in the market,” he said.
shilling@vindy.com