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SWaM - Success StoriesDear Ms. Gentius-Harris, I just wanted to drop you a line to say thank you for enhancing the business opportunities for all small businesses in the state of Virginia. Our company was formed in 2002 with 3 people. We competed mainly against two large, publicly traded companies: Thermo-Fisher Scientific and VWR Scientific. Each of these companies had over $5 billion of annual sales. Our first year sales were barely over $400,000. 5 years later we are selling $4 million annually. We are outperforming VWR in eVA purchases to Virginia and are second only to Thermo-Fisher in our commodity codes with over $2 million annual sales to Virginia. Thanks to your departments' dedication, state agencies that would never have tried our services have been using us and are surprisingly pleased. We have used the added revenue to enhance the state of Virginia's ordering experience by having an eVA punchout catalog (not an easy task) with over 100,000 items. We also were able to purchase a digital imager to create our own catalogs more quickly. We have 400% growth in both building size and employees. We are also proud to say many of our new employees are sourced from Virginia's Drug Court Treatment Programs. These are good people that have gone through extensive therapy and treatment for their past addictive problems. They are sometimes prejudged by their past. They have helped us grow tremendously! We have been able to give several people from this program jobs, training and full benefits with 100% health and dental coverage. Colonial Scientific is a good company with a very hard and tenacious work ethic but our story would not have been possible without your commitment to awareness about supplier diversity. I have personally witnessed at numerous shows and events throughout Virginia your agency's passion for creating opportunities for SWaM companies in Virginia. You have made an enormous impact on many people's lives in Virginia. Mike Rinko
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