BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Each week, we highlight the work of someone making a positive change or building a business in Buffalo. Tonight's City Shaper is leading a company that is helping businesses around the world grow.
Twisted Rope is headquartered in Buffalo, but has offices all around the world.
"We work with European clients, and we work with clients all across North America, so it puts us halfway between our office in Amsterdam and our office in L.A.," says Twisted Rope President Greg Norton.
Norton runs Twisted Rope in the Tri-Main Center. It's a digital agency offering marketing and sales content for multinational corporations - including Fortune 500 companies. The majority of Twisted Rope's 21 employees in Buffalo are Millennials. Norton says it's easy to attract them to WNY.
"Several of them have moved back to the area. One, it's less expensive. Housing. As well as, there's more opportunities now not only professionally, but also socially there's many more things going on. If you take them to Larkinville, if you show them the waterfront, those are just two simple examples of how much growth is going on in Buffalo," says Norton.
Twisted Rope recently expanded its Buffalo office giving the employees more space to work on everything from apps to augmented reality.
"Through augmented reality, you're actually creating an experience through the phone or the device that adds additional information, or a different experience, to whatever it is that you're looking at," says Norton.
For one of its latest projects, Twisted Rope is partnering with the Buffalo Arts Studio to create an app to help people navigate the Tri-Main Center for TriMania in April.
"Once you've scanned a QR code, you choose your destination, or where you want to go. Once you've chosen your destination, you're going to map how you get there. So, it's going to take you to the closest stairwell or elevator, and then once you get to the floor of your destination, it's going to take you the closest route through those hallways to your destination," says Chief Technology Officer Jon Astrop.
As for those big global companies, Norton is proud to have his team play a role in their success.
"It's our materials that we're producing here in Buffalo that are enabling them to expand their business, and these are very large opportunities, so as a result, we are impacting their bottom line for these large corporations and, when they're communicating with us, they know that Twisted Rope is Buffalo," says Norton.
If you know a City Shaper, send Kelly Dudzik an email to nominate them.