Presenter: Scott C. Smith, OPFLEX CEO
During this First Friday, Smith will share his entrepreneurial tale, successes and challenges and how technology made his firm a market leader.
Smith founded the West Hyannisport-headquartered OPFLEX Solutions LLC to manufacture, market, and sell specialized plastic and rubber foams to a variety of markets internationally. This Cape Cod entrepreneur with both revolutionary environmental technology and creative and persistent marketing won the attention of BP (British Petroleum) and helped clean-up the Deepwater Horizon Gulf oil spill with a highly-effective, reusable foam absorbent product.
When Smith heard about the Gulf oil disaster, he travelled to Venice, Louisiana, living among the fisherman, and conducting practical tests of the product in the area affected by the oil spill. Starting out at 1.5 pounds per cubic foot, OPFLEX® materials are able to absorb up to 32 times their weight in oil while weighing up to 80% less than conventional white booms. With persistence in trying to get through to BP, Smith left the Gulf area with a an order for 2 million square feet of the product and a glowing commendation from David Kinnaird, BP Site Leader in Lake Charles, LA as to the product’s effectiveness.
About the presenter: Scott C. Smith, Chief Executive Officer of OPFLEX SOLUTIONS LLC and a Harvard Business School Graduate, has been involved in over 20 patents related to cross-linked foams. OPFLEX and related products are currently being used in flooring, consumer, medical, industrial, water filtration and pollution detection markets, and in oil containment and oil absorption.
[Note: this is a program change from All About Apps]