The Commerce Technologies team (clockwise, from lower left): Frank Poore, president and founder; Rick Inzerillo, Ming Ding, Jason Stevens, Richard Jones and Aaron Jarvin.

Frank Poore founded Commerce Technologies, Inc. (CTI), in 1997 with one employee—himself. Today CTI has 15 full-time and five part-time employees, and the group and its computers seem about to burst out of the green-hued windows at the University’s Center for Environmental Sciences and Technology Management (CESTM), where the goal is to provide innovative incubator firms with a running start.

“It’s been a great, great location to get us started,” emphasized Poore, M.B.A.’97. “If you look at commercial space, there’s no way you can find anything near the quality level of CESTM, and if you did, the rates would be way out of line. The CESTM location has been a credibility starter for us.”

Commerce Technologies provides business-to-business e-commerce solutions through a proprietary infrastructure called the CommerceHub which facilitates the transfer of on-line-ordered merchandise from the retailer to the supplier to the consumer.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a major distributor like Ingram or a guy selling socks out of his basement, we can enable systems to talk to one another so that the picking, packing and shipping get done in the most synchronized way possible,” said Poore. “And, no matter what the size of the company, we can maintain their visibility from their virtual warehouses right into the hands of the consumer.”

Poore explained that companies such as Amazon.com found out the hard way that the infrastructures to link all the parts of its early virtual warehouses didn’t exist. To this day, he said, 75 percent of on-line retail orders are still processed by fax, which means the order then has to be hand-keyed, and the tracking numbers for shipping hand-written. CommerceHub eliminates such problems and inefficiencies for CTI’s clients, who include an impressive list of major national retailers.

Like any newly created company, CTI faces the financial challenges of managing overhead and attracting affordable workers. Fortunately, the company’s affiliation with UAlbany has helped in this area. The rent at CESTM is minimal and, through the Strategic Partnership for Industrial Resurgence (SPIR) program, the University awards companies matching funds to hire and offer fellowships to UAlbany students, many of whom have worked with the Center for Advanced Thin Film Technology (CAT), also based at CESTM.

“We’ve hired several people directly out of that program,” said Poore. “And we’re creating real-world experiences for our interns — who, believe me, are ‘interns’ in name only.”

The experience is intense. Employees and interns alike quickly learn about the fast-paced and highly competitive nature of the e-commerce industry. To keep pace, Poore runs aspects of his organization like a hockey team. “We need to be fast, hard-hitting, strong and graceful at the same time,” says Poore. In fact, when new hires finish their first 90 days with the team, they are rewarded with a CTI hockey jersey. They are also eligible for more formal awards, such as the University at Albany “Intern of the Year” Award, which went to junior computer science major Jason Fox.

The formula appears to be working. In 1999, CTI received the “Promising New Enterprise” award from the Capital Region Software Alliance and a first place in the fourth annual Rensselaer Business Plan Competition. This February, Poore received the University’s Excellence in Entrepreneurship award.

Poore, however, stresses that the bottom line is business expansion. CTI turned a profit in its first year, and is now “at the venture capital stage,” he says. CTI has raised over $1 million, including investments from TS Capital, the venture capital arm of Troy Savings Bank; Tech Valley Communications founder Larry Davis and other local investors.

Investors are not hesitant to put their faith in Poore, a 33-year-old Massena native who, after graduating with a bachelor’s degree from the State University of New York College at Plattsburgh in 1990, traveled the upstate New York region selling Macintosh computers. Poore also spent time in Oregon, where he designed the Intranet for Nike’s world finance division.

After working with vendors back east, Poore realized that several large catalog retailers were having, as he recalls, “unnecessarily huge problems getting products from their manufacturers to the customers. Software needed to be designed to get their systems to ‘talk’ to each other. Solving these shipping problems would benefit both the e-tailers and the consumers.”

Poore had the ideas and technical know-how, but before starting a business that could capitalize on them, he went back to school—at UAlbany’s School of Business. “You think you know things, but gaining a solid knowledge of accounting and finance programs was absolutely essential for me to enter the world of venture capital and equity investments,” said Poore.

Poore sees his continued affiliation with the University as integral to the success of his promising company. “The opportunity to be in CESTM’s business incubator and to participate in the SPIR program has helped us to be competitive. I can’t thank President Hitchcock and Alain Kaloyeros, the director of CAT, enough for their support.”

Eugene Schuler, assistant vice president for research and director of technology development, says the relationship has been reciprocal. “Our incubator program has centered on science and technology that would help entrepreneurs, but that in turn would increase educational opportunities for our students, hire University graduates, and keep quality people from leaving the region,” said Schuler.

He pointed out that the CESTM location emphasizes microelectronics, atmospherics and computer software firms, while the East Campus site focuses on incubator firms dealing in biotechnology, pharmaceutical development and biomedical engineering.

“Our philosophy, given the amount of space we have, is that companies such as Frank Poore’s will eventually grow, succeed, and require more space than we can provide,” he said. “But before then, we’re hoping they will provide opportunity for our faculty to research and consult, and for our students to learn and to get jobs.

“And we also hope that when they do leave us, they will remain in the area and keep their linkage with the University, so that more job creation and business expansion will take place around us. We believe it’s a winning concept for all of us.”