Farewell to Friendship

Here is the playlist of videos I created at Friendship Industries (enjoy!):




I bid farewell to everyone at Friendship Industries the end of June '07. I'm looking forward to following up on all the job potential here in Hampton Roads at the end of the summer, after Bert and I are settled in our downtown condo.

The Procurement Analyst: JWOD becomes AbilityOne

The Procurement Analyst: JWOD becomes AbilityOne
Friendship Industries is a JWOD Program Supplier

Friendship in the News

Click below to read all about it...

Professional Photo Album 2006

Friendship's Marketing Committee
L to R-Me, Patricia Craft (HR), Missy Stover (Development) and Bridget Baylor (Board of Directors liaison)

Holiday 2006 Greeting Card
Friendship WebStore Front Page

Contract Manufacturing & Kitting e-Catalog Page

Bird Flu Summit February 2006 in Washington DC with Safeware and DuPont
L to R-Me, Chandler Martin and Ed Simons (President) of Safeware and DuPont rep

Interview with Channel 3-TV, Harrisonburg during Senator George Allen's tour, August 2006 (see also my YouTube videos)

With U.S. Senator George Allen at Friendship
With Katrina Letman and Capt. Charles Marek, USAF Surgeon General reps during Sen. George Allen's visit to Friendship and announcement of contract for E&E Kit

With Billy M, winner of "Name the Newsletter" Contest, The Pyramid

With John Key of NISH at SOFEX Show, December 2006

Worked with JMU's School of Media and Design (SMAD) to produce promotional video for Friendship Industries

My Customer Service Rep, Laura Wine

Virginia Senator Emmett Hangar, Tom Hook of Friendship, Dave Sharpe and Don Hensley of RR Donnelley, our #1 customer, accepting their vaACCSES Community Partner Award, nominated by Friendship

Vern T. poses for RRD vaACCSES Community Partner Award

Friendship's Learning Center clients pose for RRD "congratulations" ad in vaACCSES Annual Conference booklet

Bert accepts awards for WVPT at the VA Association of Broadcasters' Annual Conference in VA Beach, June 2006

"Consider This" for Oustanding News Series and "Kids Book Festival" for Best Community Event, 2nd year in a row!

Friendship Ambassadors Training Program

Friendship Industries’ Employees have the opportunity AND the responsibility to serve as our best ambassadors, community representatives and spokespersons. Our Employees are our most precious and largest investment – they are truly our Mission AND our Human Resources.

Friendship Ambassadors Training will serve as the first step in genuinely cultivating the necessary environment that is conducive for team-building, company growth, development, communication and stability. Click on the link for all of the modules.

All Staff and Employees should be well-versed in our Mission, our History, our Fund-raising efforts and needs, our Commercial capabilities and our Sales & Marketing strategies in order to convey the messages both inside and outside of Friendship. Friendship Employees are our best, most valuable asset and our best prospecting and networking resource.

Who is in a better position to help convey a positive message than our Employees? It is up to us to dispel the myths and reinforce the realities of Friendship’s quality, skills and abilities, not disabilities.

FRIENDSHIP AMBASSADORS PRESENTATIONS by MODULES

By each of the Three Departments that make up Friendship:

DEVELOPMENT ’s presentation would be mission-based and focus on the growth, expansion and fund-raising aspects of Friendship; in addition a “History of Friendship” presentation would focus on how and why there is a Friendship Industries

SALES & MARKETING ’s presentation would be commercially-based and focus on the marketable aspects of Friendship’s work; in addition the “Commercial Future of Friendship” would focus on what we see on Friendship’s horizons

HUMAN RESOURCES ’s presentation would be Rehab-based and focus on the competitive employment, extended employment and assessment aspects of Friendship, including supported employment outcomes; additionally the “Employment Future of Friendship” would focus on where we see the company progressing

“The greatest source of competitive advantage is not really COST or QUALITY, but CREATIVITY.”

While we have not yet started our own Idea Activation Program, I suggest the book Ideas Are Free ! I recommend it to everyone!

International Bird Flu Summit in Washington DC, February 2006

Companies offer wares to guard against spread of bird flu

Friendship Industries has launched into PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) Kitting and is part of the global emergency prep for the Avian Influenza (aka Bird Flu or AI) Pandemic. Luckily, one of our small business partners and emergency equipment distributor, Safeware Inc., invited me to join them in exhibiting at the Bird Flu Summit. Click on the link above for an article published by Reuters based on an interview I did at the Summit, or read on for an excerpt:

L to R: Me (in my "Intelligent + Medical" look), Safeware's Safety Expert-Chandler Martin, Safeware's President-Ed Simons, and DuPont's Global Industrial Segment Mgr-Andy Peralla

27 Feb 2006 22:36:28 GMT
Source: Reuters

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia, Feb 27 (Reuters) - Worried that a courier might deliver avian flu along with that book you ordered to pass the time while you wait out the pandemic? Melissa Blankenship, director of sales and marketing for Friendship Industries Inc., has just the product for you. "You could easily wear these while using a keyboard," she said, demonstrating a thin, blue flexible glove. "And if the UPS (United Parcel Service) man comes, for instance, you can put this on for outside protection," she says, holding out a slightly thicker glove.

Companies are gearing up to help protect health care workers and the public in case of a bird flu pandemic, offering portable isolation units, packs with gloves, masks and suits and sanitizing systems. They demonstrated their wares on Monday at the Bird Flu Summit organized by meeting specialist New-Fields.

H5N1 avian influenza has moved steadily across Europe in recent weeks and into parts of Africa, after moving out of southeast Asia for the first time last year. It has killed or forced the slaughter of more than 200 million birds and is beginning to damage the poultry industry in some countries.

It does not yet easily infect people but it has sickened 173, by official World Health Organization count, and killed 93 of them. Experts fear it could change into a strain that easily passes from person to person, causing a pandemic. Public health specialists predict that, if it did, it could infect up to a third of the population in the space of a few weeks, wreck economies, force schools and businesses to close and overwhelm hospitals.

But simple hygiene measures and a little protective equipment could go a long way to guarding against infection, and distributors of these products report a steep rise in interest in recent weeks.

Blankenship said factories in southeast Asia are being re-fitted. "The companies that are making shirts for Wal-Mart, we need them to convert to making personal protective gear," Blankenship said. Her company is checking out potential factories in China, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Friendship's E-Newsletter, The Pyramid

You'll be able to read archived print issues of The Pyramid HERE.
Premier Issue available late February 2006!

Friendship Volunteers at WVPT Great TV Auction

The Friendship Volunteers on Phone Bank, Auctioneering and Bid Confirmation for the Fall 2005 Great TV Auction: Missy Stover (our Director of Development), me, Patricia Craft (Human Resources Manager) and Colleen Mullen (Job Coach), all posing with Cubby, the WVPT mascot.

Me on the phone with a bidder during a hot Auction item!
Bert with my brother, Bobby, who donated a truck from our family business Grubbs Chevrolet. Bobby is also a new member of the WVPT Board of Directors.


Patricia Craft (far right) and me (far left) working the phones during the WVPT Auction on behalf of Friendship Industries!

Missy Joined Friendship Industries in 2001

It is with great regret that I left Friendship in June 2007 due to my family leaving the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia area for greater opportunities . I hope to continue my career with an equally rewarding organization in the Hampton Roads area.

I joined Friendship Industries, Inc. in 2001 in the newly-created position of Sales and Marketing Director, ironically enough the week after 9/11 and a major US economic down-turn. As Friendship kicked off its next phase of growth and despite recent events, management decided that I filled the requirements: an energetic, extremely focused individual with attention to customer relationships, a strategic thinker, an effective leader and skilled communicator.

The time had come in Friendship's history to develop, implement and oversee a Comprehensive Sales and Marketing Plan to assure continued growth. I acted as customer liaison and managed the internal Customer Service personnel and was responsible for seeking out New Business Opportunities for the next generation of Friendship employees.

In business development mode, I launched Friendship's quest for Federal Government Contracts by working with NISH, attending conferences, making contacts and working through NISH's Business Development Training Program.

Read more about Government Contracting at www.jwod.gov (now www.AbilityOne.gov). Friendship achieved their first government contract ever under my direction, an Escape and Evasion (E&E) Kit for the US Air Force. I worked through existing partnerships and developed new commercial partnerships while in research and development with the USAF First Aid Kit Program Manager. Appropriations for this contract through FY07 will be approximately $3.6 million (for a total of $9 million for the initial supply to all airborne men and women) . Furthermore, the contract is a set-aside, added to the JWOD Procurement List (PL) , making Friendship Industries the sole source for the E&E Kit for the life of the USAF need. This product will never be put out for competitive bid.

NOTE: the JWOD Program launched a re-branding initiative in 2007, now referred to as AbilityOne.

Strong Branding Helps Friendship Achieve Strategic Goals

Sales and Marketing:
Stakeholder’s Report July 2004-June 2005

To Friendship Industries, the word “brand” carries many meanings.
Our brand is:
…our values and how those values are conveyed.
…what we stand for and what we don’t.
…our personality as an organization.
…how and with whom we do business.
…the care that goes into each product and service.
…the care shown to customers and clients.
…the look and feel of our facility.
…the behavior of our employees.
…all of our communications- in person, in policy, on the phone,online, in correspondence and in advertising.

To Friendship, Branding is NOT simply new slogans, taglines or logos or stating that we’re “different, better or bigger”. And in today’s marketplace, Friendship’s Brand MUST be carried through in everything we do, both internally and externally. In developing our new marketing strategy, we included Brand consistency throughout.

In developing our Brand, it was decided that the three components of Friendship should work together to develop a single plan under a similar “umbrella”:

Commercial/Sales (The “Fuel” of Friendship),
Rehab/Human Resources (The “Function” of Friendship) and
Development/Public Relations (The “Fire” of Friendship).

Despite our unique roles, responsibilities, audiences and purpose, we all have the same Mission, similar Goals and thus congruent Objectives for achieving them.

Our first step was the launch of our fresh and innovative website in May 2005. The main goals of Friendship's website are educational and informative as well as improving commercial sales.

Our objectives are:
(1) to educate the community of the contributions made to the community by Friendship and to improve and increase our public image,
(2) to educate current customers and prospects of our commercial capabilities, esp. equipment available and partnering opportunities,
(3) to increase awareness of our rehab training capabilities and
(4) to increase awareness of the needs of persons with disabilities to increase stewardship. http://www.Friendship-Industries.com

Stay tuned….

Missy Blankenship, Director of Sales and Marketing
800.777.9586
MelissaBlankenship@Friendship-Industries.com