President’s Message
After leaving our careers six years ago, I, along with my brothers Bob and David and our friend Nate, created a start-up company, Asynchrony Solutions. We believed that Asynchrony could be the vehicle that allowed us to pursue all the ideas that excited us. Four years ago, we relocated the business to downtown St. Louis. We believed that St. Louis could be a bridge between the metropolitan East and Missouri, attracting both customers and employees equally.
At the time we relocated downtown, we had never heard of the HUBZone program and weren’t even aware that we had moved into a HUBZone designated area.
Over the last four years, we have been delighted to watch the city of St. Louis grow and begin to renew itself. As more businesses have established themselves in downtown areas, interest has sparked and people have moved downtown. And at the same time, as residency has increased, businesses have also relocated. In essence, the residents and the businesses have begun to grow up together.
Then we learned about the HUBZone program. In 1992, the Federal government created legislation that was intended to boost community and residential growth in HUBZone areas. We felt that the HUBZone program was important because, by bringing in both jobs and people to the downtown area, the city could continue to experience the rebirth that we’d been seeing since we moved in. We decided to apply for a HUBZone certification. Since becoming a HUBZone company, we have all been both excited and proud to have the opportunity to be a part of the renaissance of the downtown St. Louis area.
Furthermore, we are also thrilled to maintain a relationship with our affiliate company, Asynchrony Solutions. Not only are we proud of our sister company’s accomplishments, but we can use Asynchrony Solutions’ successful reputation to influence the success of the HUBZone company. We are pleased that the achievements of our affiliate have led to acquiring extremely talented and gifted people who are dedicated to the work that we do and enthusiastic about the HUBZone opportunity. We are also proud of the synergy that exists between Asynchrony Solutions and Asynchrony HUBZone. It’s fantastic to see how Solutions can help shape the HUBZone by leveraging its successful reputation to inspire the performance of the new company, while, in exchange, the HUBZone can help Solutions to grow by subcontracting government work to Solutions, thereby growing the company.
It gives us great pride to see how eager and excited our employees are about the new company. Since HUBZone regulations require that 35% of our employees live in the HUBZone area, we have developed incentive programs for our current and future employees to move downtown. Already, several have relocated their homes to a HUBZone area, and we have also been able to hire people that already live here, both actions supporting the growth of our business. What’s more is that this is not only about St. Louis. One of our Cincinnati employees has already relocated to a HUBZone area there because the principles and benefits of the HUBZone are so important to us. And by following the HUBzone rules at all of our offices, we feel that we are not only helping St. Louis, but we are beginning to help reinvigorate other distressed areas as well.
We are beginning on a focused marketing plan to utilize the HUBZone certification to expand our business opportunities and look forward to bringing tax revenues, jobs and residents to the City of St. Louis- and also business, profit and new opportunities for the employees of our company.
Bob Elfanbaum and Steve Elfanbaum
Managers, Asynchrony hubzone