Alumni & Friends : Alumni Profiles

Rollercoaster to Success

Jay Steinmetz
BSBA '90, Entrepreneurship

Jay Steinmetz and Karl Eller have something in common. Both rode the emotional rollercoaster of going from being successful businessmen to losing it all, and then rebuilding their careers to even higher statures. “I was $16 thousand in debt,” Jay recalls. “I had to start over from scratch.”

Those dark days — brought on by a dishonest business partner that Jay reports stole $186,000 in assets, maxed out his credit cards, turned off his utilities, and even had him thrown in jail to prevent him from testifying against him — ended in 1998 with the re-founding of Barcoding, Inc., which today employs 60 throughout eight U.S. locations and one office in the Netherlands.

Jay’s company provides complete automated data collection solutions for tracking inventory, documents, packages, equipment — anything and everything a company wants to keep track of accurately and efficiently — using barcodes, radio frequency identification chips, and wireless handheld scanning devices.

As its founder and CEO, Jay is one of Baltimore’s shining young stars. In 2004, he was a finalist for the annual Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Last October, Barcoding, Inc. climbed onto the Inc. 500 list, an annual ranking of the fastest-growing companies in the country. With a five-year average annual sales growth of almost 90 percent, the company debuted at number 419.

Earlier in 2004, Forbes magazine named Barcoding, Inc. one of their Ten Startups to Watch, and the company was also named to Deloitte’s prestigious Technology Fast 50 Program for Maryland. None of this is terribly surprising when you consider that their revenue grew from just over $1 million in 1998 to more than $20 million in 2004.

An innovator to the core, Jay has recently taken Barcoding, Inc. in new directions. The company has developed a proprietary technology for detecting intrusion into wireless networks. Another initiative leverages Geiger counter technology in wireless communications systems with applications for homeland security and crisis management for first responders.

Despite the success of his company, Jay isn’t just about work. He’s an active philanthropist, raising money for Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and the Children’s Miracle Network, and also donating time and money to the B’MORE Fund, which annually awards a grant to an outstanding social entrepreneur in the Baltimore area.