Bill Robbins has nearly twenty-seven years of experience in the field of management, business development, marketing, and sales. Beginning in 1980, he built his first company, Visual Impressions, into an East Coast leader in full-service, multi-media production company. It started humbly in his dorm room at Rochester Institute of Technology, growing out of his keen interest in the multi-media, audio-visual, video, and photographic mediums.
After a modest beginning in a 1,200 square-foot office in downtown Rochester, New York, Visual Impressions’ rapidly grew into a 40,000 square-foot production facility right next to Eastman Kodak’s World Headquarters. Bill parlayed his natural management ability and boundless energy into a company that rivaled some of the more established multi-media production houses in the United States.
Under Bill’s skillful direction, Visual Impressions excelled, boasting Fortune 1,000, privately held and government clients such as: Bausch & Lomb, Eastman Kodak Company, Xerox Corporation, Harris Corporation, Proctor & Gamble Pharmaceutical, HSBC Bank, Occidental Chemical Corporation, Delaware North Companies, various New York State Governmental Agencies, Mobil’s HEFTY brand, Frontier Communications, and many more.
In 1993, Bill detected changes in business communication and felt the interactive-internet market growing. After two years of research, Bill transformed Visual Impressions into Interactive Media Design Corporation in March 1995. IMDC specialized in Point-of-Sales transactional kiosks as well as a corporate portal intranet and a developer of interactive multi-media systems where his firm created corporate sales and motivational presentations for Fortune 1000 companies including Wegmans Food Markets, Chase Manhattan Bank, Blue Cross and Blue Shield and Frontier Communications to name a few.
In 1998 Bill was approached by the principals of Axiom Corporation to head up its transformation from a contract IT-Information Technology provider to a custom software and internet development firm. Bill developed product marketing, sales tactics, and custom software application strategies to move Axiom into these growing markets.
During Bill’s tenure at Axiom Corporation, he uncovered an opportunity in calendar year 2000 with one of their vendors Informix Software, a leader in the field of enterprise databases development. This opportunity took Bill from a firm of 85 to one of over 3,500 employees worldwide with sales greater than $1Billion. Bill excelled again with achieving Quota Sales Club within his first year. In 2001 Informix announced that the IBM Software Division would purchase Informix, the Database Company now placing Bill in a position with the largest Information technology company in the world. Once more Bill was respected for his business acumen, marketing, and sales expertise where again he achieved 100 Percent Club during his tenure and in 2003 was awarded the top 50 Software Sales Reps in North America. In 2004 Bill was promoted to manage one of IBM’s largest Tier One Software partners, Dassault Systemes, headquartered in Paris, France. Bill had over 60 people worldwide and thousands of sales reps on his team to move sales forward with companies such as Boeing, United Technologies, Gulfstream, Sikorsky, Daimler Chrysler, Honda, Siemens, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, John Deere, and the list goes on.
In 2004 Bill had the entrepreneurial urge to start another company and started to explore manufacturing rather than service-based businesses. This would be Bill’s third start-up. That year, a business acquaintance introduced Bill to the rubber recycling products business. After extensive research and business planning during 2004 and 2005 Bill and his sister Deborah wrote a business plan for a manufacturing company that would produce products made from recycled tire rubber. In 2005 they formed that company, RubberForm Recycled Products, LLC. In 2005 they secured the funding needed to launch RubberForm Recycled Products. Their financing came from several private and public sources. In January 2006 the company commenced renovating their building and installing the equipment needed to mold recycled rubber products in an existing building in Lockport, NY. RubberForm’s equipment was purchased from various sources throughout the United States, and they began to put together RubberForm’s manufacturing operation.
Molding process development and testing started in the fall of 2006 on RubberForm’s installed presses. The company’s official grand opening was held at the beginning of December 2006. Continuous process improvement continued during the 1st quarter of 2007 with product shipments starting in April 2007.
Bill continued with IBM working nights and weekends on RubberForm’s business and in July 2007 left IBM to pursue his dream of running a manufacturing company. Bill comes by his innovative entrepreneurship naturally as his father ran a successful manufacturing company where he invented the first child resistant plastic prescription vial approved by the FDA. Bill has always wanted to run a manufacturing company where he could follow the success his father had.
Bill and his wife, Susan, have three grown children that all work together at RubberForm.