Good Vizibility

Joe Rossini is the perfect example of how patience can pay.

Rossini retired to Florida and bought a home in Bonita Springs in 2003, but like so many of his peers he quickly grew restless. “I was too young to do nothing,” says the 62-year-old entrepreneur.

Rossini, who sold an auto-parts distribution business in which he was a partner in New Jersey, was doing some part-time consulting work when a client asked him to survey the Southwest Florida market in 2005.

While he was identifying repair shops, car dealers and other prospective auto-parts buyers, he had the idea to build a database of every building and business in the “239” area code.

It was an ambitious project. His plan was to tally every building and business in the area by drilling public records and physical inspections, something no one's attempted to do before.

Building such a database could prove valuable, but initially Rossini wasn't sure how. One idea he had was to load the database into a global-positioning device he could rent to tourists who might use the information to get around.

But in 2008, Apple started selling the iPhone, and Rossini realized that the phone would quickly replace the GPS-only devices. Fortunately, Rossini's database wasn't completed until 2010 so he didn't start the GPS device business.

By the time the database was completed, it had taken five years for Rossini to build it. His spreadsheet grew to include 71,000 rows. “As a retiree, I put in a 10-hour day,” says Rossini, who stays in shape by swimming and walking.

Rossini never intended to sell his database. “One of my goals is economic development for this region,” he says. And his wife and two sons are now involved in the business, too. “I wanted to have some legacy to leave behind,” he says.

So Rossini decided to turn his treasure trove of data into a smart-phone application called VizMarket. He hired RT Design Group of Naples to develop the application, which is available for free to users of the iPhone and phones that operate using the Android system.

Rossini declines to say how much money he's invested in the project or how much advertising he expects to sell. But the idea is to get enough users to download the application so that businesses will find it beneficial to advertise. “We want to get everybody as a customer,” he says.

For example, users can search VizMarket for a business to obtain information such as a phone number, address and website. One function allows users to “follow” a business so that they can receive messages from a business alerting them to special deals.

Rossini promises businesses who participate will have access to detailed analytics that tell them how users are responding to promotions, how many views they get and when. Because he tracks all commercial buildings, Rossini says the program could be especially useful to commercial real estate brokers. (He declines to divulge advertising rates until the marketing campaign launches later this year.)

To recruit businesses, Rossini plans to establish an affiliate program that rewards people for referring new business to VizMarket. It's going especially popular with students at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers who are looking for ways to make extra money, he says.

Persuading businesses to participate will be Rossini's biggest challenge when his marketing effort goes into effect later this year. “It's going to take cooperation and trust,” he says.

But after nearly seven years of labor, Rossini is ready to get started.