Business View - November 2015 153
eral years. “In 2003, we were doing zero hotels and zero
hospitality. Twelve years later, we’re doing about 30 hotels.
So it goes to show you that sometimes you can start with
nothing and then, over time, you wind up developing a
whole business.” HLS is also continuing to stay on the cut-
ting edge of laundry technology. “Right now, we’re looking
at a couple of things,” Romeo notes. “One capital expendi-
ture is an automated garment system, and another is ex-
panding the use of our RFIDs.” (RFID or Radio-frequency
Identification is the wireless use of electromagnetic fields
to transfer data, for the purposes of automatically identify-
ing and tracking tags attached to objects. The tags contain
electronically stored information.)
The company is also eager to expand its territorial spread
as well as its market penetration. “There are still a lot of
opportunities,” suggests Romeo. “The U.S., for example,
presents a potential growth market that we haven’t really
addressed, specifically. But our location here in Ottawa is
45 minutes from Ogdensburg, NY, two hours from Water-
town NY, and three hours fromSyracuse, and right now, we
HEALTHCARE
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