What I love about Allegheny County is, it's where I was raised, it's just a wonderful place. The people are very special, have a great work ethic, and it's just everybody likes to be home, I guess. NAPCO, we're a custom manufacturer of specialty packaging and presentation packaging for a lot of different markets. We're probably one of the only companies in the U.S. that has the ability to design a solution to packaging or presentation — they create a physical sample then create a production-quality prototype for the customer to sign off on before it goes into production.

Well actually, I was a Business Ed major up at Appalachian. I've been in the Army for a couple of years and I've worked on some projects with the president of Dr. Grabow Smoking Pipes, and they came to me and asked me if I would be interested in going into business making these products for them. We started it, my brother and I, and here we are today.

We've had a lot of support from the county, the Wilkes Community College giving us training support, and they still today we've had been multiple times where they've helped us implement new programs. One thing that was great about Allegheny County at that time was there's so much talent here. The labor pool was very good at that time, and that's the thing probably most important, the thing that separates you from your competitors are your people. So, we were very fortunate to have the kind of talent.

I think the rewards of seeing people grow in their jobs — we have some really, really talented people that have grown in their positions and have helped make this company successful.

Hi, my name is Rocky Proffitt, CEO and founder of NAPCO coherence as part of North Carolina we're a custom packaging company with employs about a hundred people here in Allegheny County.