Firm a linchpin for client success

PINNING THEM DOWN: Rhode Island-based Linchpin has made a name for itself working with companies both locally and across the country. Pictured above are Linchpin employees, clockwise, starting at bottom: Company principals Michael Chevalier, Jason Narciso and Aaron Ware; Senior Project Coordinator Jennifer Kusiak; senior WordPress engineer Jonathan Desrosiers; and senior designer Mary Beth Murphy. / PBN PHOTO/BRIAN MCDONALD
PINNING THEM DOWN: Rhode Island-based Linchpin has made a name for itself working with companies both locally and across the country. Pictured above are Linchpin employees, clockwise, starting at bottom: Company principals Michael Chevalier, Jason Narciso and Aaron Ware; Senior Project Coordinator Jennifer Kusiak; senior WordPress engineer Jonathan Desrosiers; and senior designer Mary Beth Murphy. / PBN PHOTO/BRIAN MCDONALD

A company built by three Rhode Island natives is bound to be committed to growing in the Ocean State, although that growth comes from clients all over the U.S.
“We’re based in Rhode Island, but we have clients in Massachusetts, New York, Michigan and California,” said Aaron Ware of Coventry, one of Linchpin’s three owners.
“The Web is so big, we like to say we work everywhere,” said Ware. “We don’t have a sales team. Our clients are mostly by word of mouth.”
Some of Linchpin’s projects do start out locally, often with the Providence startup-accelerator Betaspring.
“We started working with Autobike on their website and arranging photography for them,” said Michael J. Chevalier of Providence, one of the Linchpin partners.
Autobike, an automatic-shifting bicycle founded on the goal “evolve the bike,” was created by two men from Detroit. The bikes are now selling across the country.
“They went back to Detroit and we still work with them,” said Chevalier. “We’ve worked with some other startups on brand development, marketing strategies and e-commerce. It’s fun to work with companies like that. They’re enthusiastic about their projects and we can see them grow.”
Linchpin has done work for Smithfield-based FGX International, one of the world’s leading designers and marketers of many brands of sunglasses, including Foster Grant.
Linchpin also works with East Greenwich-based Civil, a skate, shoe and clothing shop that’s expanded to a second store in Providence.
Focusing on its range of talent, skills and creative ideas, Linchpin does collaborate with other creative professionals to complete the range of needed skills for client needs.
The name Linchpin symbolizes a network of services and clients, held together by a strong and simple device.
“A linchpin is a very simple piece of metal that holds together a complex machine, like an axle in a car,” said Ware. “We offer our clients a lot of services, like website creation, branding, application development, e-commerce, social media campaigns, iPhone apps,” said Ware. Ware’s talent for technology first attracted collaborators and clients and evolved into Digital Octane, the more technically oriented forerunner of Linchpin. It was the skill sets of the three current owners that turned out to be the right mix for a more-permanent collaboration.
“One reason for the partnership is you can only freelance for so long and then from a business standpoint, you decide it’s better not to go it alone,” said Chevalier. “Our partnership allows each of us to do what we do best.”
“I was building websites and doing production and email marketing,” said Linchpin partner Jason Narciso of East Greenwich. “Our collective work puts everything together.”
Putting it all together and building both its client and employee bases convinced the three owners to move Linchpin into new quarters in a renovated mill in Pawtucket in August.
“We looked for a place for eight months in downtown Providence, in Warwick and in East Greenwich, where we were before,” said Ware. “We found that the price-point of Pawtucket, as well as the location, works for us,” said Ware. “We want to get more talent in.”
In addition to the three owners, Linchpin has three other employees and is looking to bring the total to 10 in the next six months and up to 20 in the next couple of years.
Rhode Island’s well-known skills gap, where jobs lay open because well-trained employees are not available, has hit Linchpin.
“We have two employees from Massachusetts and we’ve cut down their commute with our move to Pawtucket,” said Ware. “We have good colleges and some good vocational schools in Rhode Island [but we also] look outside the state for talent.
“Our very first employee that we hired first worked as our intern. When he graduated from Salve Regina, we put him on the payroll,” he said. •

COMPANY PROFILE
Linchpin
OWNERS: Aaron G. Ware, Jason Narciso, Michael J. Chevalier
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Marketing and Web development
LOCATION: 80 Fountain Street, Suite 210, Pawtucket
EMPLOYEES: Six full time
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 2006 as Digital Octane, expanded services and rebranded as Linchpin in 2011
ANNUAL SALES: WND

No posts to display