Curtains Up

Lots of people mutter some choice words under their breath when they get stuck in a rubbernecking traffic jam.

Carl Cannova, who in his Corporate America life was one of the highest-ranking Sysco Corp. food services executives in Florida, was a fellow mutterer. But Cannova, former president and CEO of Palmetto-based Sysco Food Services-West Coast Florida, did something different with the gripes: He turned it into a business opportunity that he also hopes is a public service.

“For years I've been in traffic jams,” says Cannova. “The traffic jams and then the accidents are caused by people going in the opposite direction who have to stop to see the gore.”

Cannova's answer is Stop Rubbernecking, a University Park-based business he founded with his wife, Tommie Cannova. Its main product is the SRN 1000, a privacy barrier that's quickly deployed to block accident scenes and other restricted areas from public views. The patent-pending product is essentially an oversized weighted curtain — one that's held with three steel tripods and spreads 6 feet high and 12 feet wide. “This serves an important purpose,” says Cannova.

He means the product, but he could also be talking about his post-Sysco career. Cannova retired in 2008 after 13 years at the helm of the Sysco unit, one of three in Florida for the $44 billion Houston-based food and beverage behemoth. Cannova oversaw a major growth expansion at the facility, which had customers from Naples to north of Tampa. His unit grew from 300 employees in 1996 to 750 by 2007. The division also moved up in Sysco's annual company-wide sales rankings, from 46 out of 47 in 1996 to third place by 2006, behind only Boston and Los Angeles.

But Cannova, 70, quickly grew tired of golf in retirement. Stop Rubbernecking, which the Cannovas founded in 2011 and have already backed with $350,000 from savings, has instead become his retirement passion. It's also become his learning ground in the transition from CEO to do-it-all entrepreneur.

“I had some wonderful people at Sysco and they helped me immensely,” says Cannova. “But when you go into business for yourself, you're it. This has been an expensive proposition, to learn what I should be doing.”

One specific mistake Cannova points to, for instance, is he's lost time, and money, by attending ineffective trade shows. Some shows have cost the firm close to $10,000, with setup and travel.

Another mistake was underestimating how long it took to get the product from idea to market. A hitch in one part of the poles, for example, delayed the launch from August 2012 to this past January. He came up with the idea for the product in 2010, so delays, especially for an executive used to real-time action, were agony.
“Even when we thought we were all done,” says Cannova, “we weren't.”

Still, Cannova says the final product, designed by Sarasota-based RoBrady, was worth the wait. The SRN 1000 has been on the market for about eight months, and interest has grown steadily. The company targets police departments, government agencies, airport security and even coroner's departments for sales.

“This is a superior product to protect crime scenes,” Manatee County Sheriff Brad Steube says in a release about the product launch. “The system is durable, easy to travel with and set up and it is a crucial tool to provide privacy for victims and officers at several types of traumatic events.”

The firm has sold about 100 SRN 1000s, at a cost of a little less than $2,000 apiece. Clients include 11 law enforcement agencies in Florida. It also has customers in Idaho, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin, and is working on deals with clients in Hawaii, Bermuda and even London.

Cannova also plans to attend large trade shows in Texas later this year, where he hopes to meet more potential clients. “The best way to sell it,” he says, “is to have people see it, touch it and feel it.”