Aldis, Inc.

Aldis Inc., founded by Vig Sherrill, a technology company located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. "Aldis develops, commercializes and sells patent-pending, efficient traffic and energy management technology and services to municipal partners." Vig is also the CEO of the company, and was kind enough to spend his Monday night speaking to our class about his journey.

Vig is an experienced entrepreneur and is thrilled about heading Aldis. He first came up with the idea for the company while waiting at night for a red light to change in a deserted area. He thought that there should be a more efficient method of changing lights to adapt to traffic fluxes during the day. He began to work on the idea, but soon ran into a problem. A system that would replace current sensors at traffic lights would benefit the citizens of the city in which it was installed, but the citizens would not be the ones paying for the system. Because of this, the system would need to be beneficial to the municipality as well as the citizens. After some consideration, they realized that they could record information about the intersections as well as change the lights. This would provide valuable data to the municipalities who desire them.

Aldis received funding through venture capital, which indicates that Aldis shows great promise as an emerging company. Aldis's most significant advantage over their competition is that they use a PC as their system's hardware. Because of this, as PC quality improves, Aldis's product will get inherently better with time. Their late start relative to competitors gave them the advantage of programming with existing systems instead of having to create new systems on their own.

One difficulty Aldis encountered was the fact that there is a limited market for their product. There are a limited number of intersections in the US, about 350,000 total. This means that the maximum number of intersection cameras sold in the US is 350,000. However, Vig is determined to improve their product and their reach to other markets. They have begun marketing overseas, providing many more intersections for which Aldis could provide. Also, Aldis is developing their product to function in other applications in addition to intersections. They are starting to be able to use it to count cars in parking garages, as well as discussing the possibility of collecting data about planes at airports. With further modifications, they could market to companies who wish to collect data about activity in their parking lots.

Vig emphasized the importance of being able to recognize opportunities to change directions and to improve. He stated that he doesn't know a single entrepreneur who is making money on what they initially set out to make money on. You have to be able to adapt and make good decisions. As Dr. Martin says, "It only takes one thing to succeed - Good judgment. It only takes one thing to get good judgment - Experience. It only takes one thing to get experience - Bad judgment." All the decisions made my an entrepreneur are beneficial in gaining "experience" or benefiting the company, which is important to remember.