Prototype Productions Inc.
Ashburn company rebounds after setbacks in 2001
2006 Small Business Success Story of the Year - Northern Virginia finalist

by Jessica Sabbath
Virginia Business
February 2007

In 2001, Prototype Productions Inc. suffered blow after blow. The dot-com and telecom busts, a drop in the manufacturing industry and the terrorist attacks all but dried up business for the technology development and manufacturing firm based in Ashburn.

In response to the economic downturn, longtime customers started canceling contracts. Investors pulled funding for a major new product, and the medical industry - a primary source of business - had more money to beef up security than develop new products. But while life threw brothers Italo and Joe Travez lemons, they were determined to make lemonade.

Rather than lay off workers, Italo and Joe, the company's COO and CEO, respectively, took the time to cross-train their work force. "We invested in management resources and took existing team members and trained them in our ERP [integration] systems," says Italo Travez. "It was a great time to learn more things that could help us in the future."

The company broadened its scope and diversified by gaining more public-sector work. By 2003, PPI was growing again as commercial clients bounced back, and it began nabbing multimillion contracts from national security and defense agencies. Since that year, revenues have grown 225 percent.

Today, almost half of PPI's work is for the public sector. The company has developed highly technical devices for the defense and security industries, including a biological agent detector and a GPS-guided parachute delivery system. Examples of commercial products it has designed and developed include a finger identification device and a medical surgical simulator.

Prototype Productions bills itself as an innovation "hot house" for product development. While it takes on projects that call for just engineering design or manufacturing in its digital manufacturing center, it specializes in developing a product from a "napkin-sketch" idea into a marketable product.

Ted Rogers, an experienced business executive who formerly worked for major companies including the Friedman Billings Ramsey Group, runs PPI's in-house commercialization arm. "Ted gives a dose of reality on the business end from the very beginning on the marketability of a product," says Terry Hadley, PPI's director of core services.

VSE Corp., a system design and integration prototype manufacturing business in Alexandria, uses PPI to replicate prototypes VSE has created and to help complete its design work. "They respond very quickly, their quality is very high, their prices are more than competitive and their personnel are very cooperative," says Len Goldstein, VSE's director of business and new product development.

In 2006, PPI increased its work force by 56 percent, from about 45 to 70 employees, and leased an additional 10,000 square feet of office space. The company plans to build a 60,000-square-foot headquarters about a mile from its current site, with room to expand another 60,000 square feet.

Italo Travez founded the company in Gaithersburg, Md., in 1991 after graduating from the University of Maryland. While there, he helped build the university's solar car program. Travez found it frustrating to design and engineer cars without the manufacturer's input. "That gave me an idea to build a platform to help foster and accelerate new product development," he says.

Travez moved the company from Maryland to Virginia in 1997 because of Virginia's support for the technology field. PPI has become active in the state's economic development and technology organizations, and it works closely with universities to keep abreast of trends. The company has also launched a nonprofit, Leadership for Young Minds, promoting science and technology to students.

Travez's older brother, Joe, joined the company in 1998 after spending 15 years designing and building hotels for Marriott International Inc. The company still seeks the advice of the brothers' father, Jose Travez, who brought his family to the United States from Quito, Ecuador, when he obtained a long-term manufacturing job. The family gained U.S. citizenship in the 1970s.

And although the company strives to develop the technology of tomorrow, it is the values of the education their father received at the Don Bosco Technical College in Ecuador that the Travez brothers say drives the success of their company. "In the end all we are is glorified carpenters," notes Joe Travez. "We must always remember, it's not the latest tools or technologies, but instead our quality of our work and commitment to core values that will yield a grand future."