DISRUPTOR OF THE YEAR FINALISTS
DAVE
Dave is the finance version of David vs. Goliath. Three friends were fed up with their banking experience, often incurring $38 overdraft fees and never having insights into how much money was left before payday. With customer loyalty at big banks at an all-time low, they figured building the next great financial institution, one that could service 99% of Americans, not just the 1%, was the right idea for the times.
Instead of building a bank right away, the Dave team started with solving for simple pain points like overdraft protection and automated budgeting to amass millions of loyal members. Today, Dave has reinvented other areas of finance, from no-interest cash advances, income creation, un-bounceable checks and more to truly take on goliath. Dave plans to go public through a SPAC merger valued at $4 billion to accelerate growth into new products and continue the scale of its banking platform.
Yedi Houseware
Established in 1979, Yedi Houseware offers elegant, yet contemporary products for the home. A family-owned business, Yedi Houseware is carried by major retailers and department stores nationwide. This team has created a unique international approach to kitchen, gift, and tabletop design, which constantly receives global recognition for its creativity and innovation.
Among other customer friendly offerings is Yedi Houseware’s tenth year anniversary brand of ClassicCoffee&Tea. Designed by International china artisans, ClassicCoffee&Tea currently has 300 patterns of demitasse sets, cake and dessert plates. From classically elegant, to ornate and whimsical, ClassicCoffee&Tea offers a wide range of beautiful patterns. Yedi Houseware has something for those that appreciate traditional and contemporary, offering true value without sacrificing beauty, Yedi feels it is onto something very special, and so does its customer base.
INNOVATOR AWARD FINALISTS
GameBreaker Inc.
The inventor and pioneer of the soft shell headgear market, the GameBreaker story goes back to the early 2000s. Â The founding team discovered a gap in player safety on days when athletes were participating in either 7on7, flag football, or non-padded practices during their tackle football season. Â Enter the original GameBreaker soft shell headgear, Â developed and patented in 2001 after ten years of research and development.
While we started primarily for football back in 2011, GameBreaker products are being used in multiple sports today. In 2019, the company launched the GameBreaker-AURA, the world’s #1 rated protective soccer headband, Stealth Helmet Liners, and Under Shield Pratice Pads to expand on its original commitment to player safety. The GameBreaker-PRO headgear and GameBreaker-AURA soccer headband are both 5-star rated by Virginia Tech and the company’s GameBreaker-GB product is 4-star rated by Virginia Tech.
Gimbal Inc.
At its core, Gimbal is a technology company. It develops location-driven products that provide solutions to help you master the customer journey for a more personalized approach to advertising and marketing. Gimbal formed when two independent companies – The Mobile Majority and Gimbal – merged in 2016 to bring the best of adtech and martech together under a single offering.
From a continued innovation front and to quickly pivot to solve for the needs of brands during the pandemic, Gimbal launched a new product in the fall of 2020 called On-the-Way SDK. This solution connects mobile orders with in-store, curbside, and drive-thru pickup options at brick & mortar locations for safe and seamless customer experience. The company since released another version of On-the-Way that is more out-of-the box requiring less development and can be implemented in minutes vs. months. Â
ACCELERATOR AWARD FINALIST
JB Office
JB Office is a national leader in office supplies and utilization of technology. The company’s founders wanted to create a company that fused the necessity of office supplies with the new generation of order fulfillment, user experience, and green products. Customer Service and superior products are the main focus of JB Office, making sure that each customer is 100% satisfied with each and every order. With seven days per week customer service and more than 150 warehouses, JB Office is able to offer most items to clients with next business day delivery.
JB Office continually innovates and finds ways to deliver a better customer experience and find more environmentally conscious products at competitive prices. The company provides services to small offices all the way up to large scale manufacturers. With its warehouses strategically located throughout the US, the company is able to offer next day delivery with no extra charge.
RSM MIDDLE MARKET AWARD FINALISTS
Movers+Shakers
After producing the most-viral campaign in TikTok history in 2019, Movers+Shakers became “the go-to agency for brands making moves on TikTok” (Refinery29) and “the best agency in the world at creating campaigns on TikTok” (Adweek). The firm has amassed over 150 billion views on TikTok. Over this period, Movers+Shakers has received over 30 awards for its innovative work.
Movers+Shakers launched epic viral challenges on TikTok, like Amazon’s #PajamaJam last December, that led to over 6 billion views and 13,000 user-generated videos using the branded song it created.  Movers+Shakers also brought e.l.f. Cosmetics onto Triller, cementing them as the first beauty brand to launch a Triller challenge. The original holiday album the firm created landed e.l.f. on the Billboard charts, next to Mariah Carey and JLo! Movers+Shakers also launched a collaboration between e.l.f. and Chipotle that broke the internet, generating 4+ billion earned media impressions in a few days.
Packform USA
As each year goes by, the world gets more connected. We are faster, quicker, and more efficient than ever before. So how did the packaging industry, the original leaders in innovation and globalization, get so left behind?
The irony was not lost on Packform. So the innovative company did something about it. It tore the industry wide open, creating a one-stop-shop marketplace for all things packaging, with the best prices, too. Packform created a marketplace based everywhere. But more importantly, a marketplace based on the customers, dealers, and suppliers. Packform’s marketplace features everything needed for packaging and shipping material, such as bags, pouches, boxes and labels. It uses technology to do the heavy lifting and so does not have a lot of overhead. It grows by attracting established dealers, who are essentially salespeople who join the company and bring their customer base with them.
SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AWARD FINALIST
The Marvin Group
The Marvin Group is a vertically integrated, privately held small business headquartered in Southern California. It is a vertically integrated Aerospace & Defense organization, which leverages its relatively unique position in the market to provide both value and reliability to our partners and customers. The Marvin Group’s three core business units serve the Air & Space, Land and Naval domains with quality products and technical services, and we support a wide range of U.S. and Western manufactured aircraft, ground vehicles and increasingly, maritime platforms.
The Marvin Group has developed nearly unrivaled capabilities to support its customer base in the areas of its business units’ core competencies, which include airborne stores carriage and release equipment & aircraft auxiliary equipment; automated aerospace & military test equipment from the flightline to depot; and power & thermal management solutions for land & maritime platforms.
SUSTAINABILITY AWARD FINALISTS
Ettitude Holdings Inc.
The founders of ettitude, a company that makes cotton-alternative CleanBamboo fabric-based products, believe that nature is not a place we visit, it is our home. That’s why they are a proudly Climate Neutral certified company. In 2021 and beyond, ettitude will measure, reduce and offset all of the carbon it takes to make and deliver every ettitude product. By offsetting its emissions through sustainable bamboo reforestation in Nicaragua, attitude is contributing to a healthier planet for all.
Bamboo is the most resource-efficient plant on earth. ettitude’s  CleanBamboo is sourced from FSC-certified sustainable forests and made in a non-toxic, closed-loop system that recycles 98% of water. Compared to a cotton sheet set, ettitude’s signature sheet set uses 500 times less water. That’s enough to save 8189 gallons — as much as 93 Americans use in a day, and produces 52% fewer carbon emissions.
Supply Solutions
Supply Solutions is a full line distributor of janitorial supplies, packaging supplies and office products. The company has a comprehensive ordering platform and offers next day delivery nationwide. Supply Solutions puts together custom supply programs for Fortune 500 companies, small businesses, and everyone in between. The company prides itself on world-class customer service while maintaining a personal touch. We embrace our clients as partners and strive to help them attain business goals relative to supplies and develop joint business plans to do so.
Supply Solutions achieves this unique relationship with customers through The Supply Solutions “PARTNER” Process, which includes precisely identifying each customer’s needs, analyzing those needs, reviewing findings with the customer, transitioning carefully, notifying the customer of any issues, evaluating performance and reporting proactively and consistently. This also includes being passionate environmental stewards via recycling, reusing and reducing consumption of items that have a negative impact on the environment. Â
