Success Stories

Veronique Sarad owns and operates a full-service travel agency that handles the hassle of trip planning for her clients. Travel The World LLC focuses on assisting corporate and government organizations with their lodging and travel needs. Sarad takes charge of the entire process from research to negotiation and travel support.

Sarad came to SC APEX for assistance with System for Award Management (SAM) to ensure she was entering her information correctly. “This was completely new territory for me. I worked as a subcontractor last year but had not submitted any offers as a prime contractor before,” Sarad said.

Sarad was recently awarded $43,709.88 to provide Hotel and Lodging Services for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Her SC APEX counselor assisted her with applying for the contract, “She answered my questions regarding information I wanted and needed to submit. She is always very prompt and has valuable insight.”

Sarad also notes that working with her counselor helped to prepare her for this and future opportunities.

“My counselor has been answering my questions for months. This means I have been gaining knowledge from her that has helped me prepare my offer independently. She has reviewed past offers, given me feedback and has made suggestions repeatedly.”

Chanting Hemphill signed up with SC APEX Accelerator for System For Award Management (SAM) assistance for Triple C Rebar. He also wanted to learn more about the government contracting process, specifically bidding.

“SC APEX helped me in understanding the bidding process and what needed to be submitted. There were times when I needed assistance immediately because of time-sensitive documents and SC APEX was there to always assist me. Because of the amount of the contract there were several documents that needed to be submitted that I was not familiar with but with SC APEX’s knowledge and guidance I was able to secure the contract.”

Triple C Rebar was awarded contracts totaling nearly $5 million dollars with the South Carolina Department of Transportation to install rebar for bridge replacement. Jobs were generated and retained from the contract.

Crawford, a marketing and branding agency, needed assistance attaining its Women Owned Small Business certification.

After hearing about SC APEX Accelerators from the South Carolina Department of Commerce, Crawford Senior Vice President Allison Mertins reached out to SC APEX as a potential resource.

“I initially sought out SC APEX because I thought they would be a good resource for our woman-owned business. After speaking with Scott Dobereiner, my SC APEX counselor, I realized that he would be able to help me with my SBA Woman-owned certification. I had been challenged in the past with it. Also, Scott mentioned that DUNs was being replaced with Unique IDs, so I was able to take care of that quickly and easily.”

Crawford was alerted to a Request For Proposal (RFP) from the Bid Match Service with SC APEX and was awarded a $70,000 contract for the State of Vermont to provide CVFiber with marketing and communications support.

Two positions were added to Crawford because of the contract.

“We added a new Account Supervisor and Digital Media Strategist to help cover this account.”

I.T. Phalanx’s CEO Charline Perry was awarded a $24,000 contract from the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs for Information Technology services. Perry says that SC APEX counselors assisted her through the entire process – from the solicitation to the award.

“Mrs. Ashley Duwel and Mr. Ron Conner helped me by answering all the many questions I had about the solicitation,” Perry said.

She also mentioned receiving help with wording her emails when she had questions for the customer.

“They helped by providing guidance on bid pricing and being more confident in communicating with my customer with the information I needed to know. They helped me through the hurdles that I initially faced and helped me overcome those.”

Perry says that because of the assistance she received from SC APEX she is confident in moving forward with the process in the future.

“They helped me better understand, and I can communicate the bid process more efficiently and effectively.”

Coast to Coast Custom Mobile Vending founder Tyler Hagan went from running a food truck, to building them.

“After running my own food truck, I realized there was good money to be made by actually building trailers and trucks for like businesses or restaurants and schools. We have a private industry focus for restaurants, schools, and country clubs.”

His company’s focus turned to looking at government contracting.

“Government contracting is basically the same – trying to sell trucks and trailers to agencies. Food trucks, mobile housing – there’s a lot of different options.”

Tyler knew he would need assistance to pursue government contracting. A google search led him to PTAC SC (now SC APEX Accelerators). After signing up, he was assigned counselor Ashley Duwel.

“Ashley helped us from our first step, we understood what to do, and how things work much faster and easier.  Overall – I think Ashley has been instrumental in helping us learn the contracting space, from our first meetings.  We won a contract with the DLA /NAVSEA as well.”

Coast to Coast’s contracts with U.S. Fish and Game and USACE totaled to approximately $40,000.