NEWS - Lowcountry News

SBJ Staff Report

Oct 12, 2011 – Beaufort County’s NanoAndMore USA is one of three finalists in FedEx’s national Small Business of the Week competition going on this week.

Each week during the NFL season, FedEx announces three nominees from across the country for the FedEx Small Business of the Week Award. NanoAndMore USA, with offices on Lady’s Island in Beaufort County, is one of this week’s nominees, and could win $5,000 and a chance to go to the Super Bowl if customers and local businesses show their support and vote at www.fedex.com/smallbusiness, according to George McMurtry, president and CEO of the company.

“We applied for it through FedEx, and it’s taken on a life of its own!” he laughs. “We sell to the best scientists and engineers in the country. We do a bang up job of selling the best products to those businesses. At any given time, we have a million plus worth of inventory here in our distribution office,” McMurtry explains. He imports from Bulgaria, Switzerland and Germany, and then resells throughout North and South America.

“I bought a house, after gaining all the permits, and run a distribution business out of the house. Commercial real estate is just so expensive,” he explains. “Other than FedEx showing up a couple times a day, no one even knows we’re here.”

McMurtry states that the products they sell are “very small and very expensive stuff. We have this inventory of incredibly small parts. Through telephone, email and our website – that’s how we sell,” he says. “FedEx brings the products to us, and then FedEx picks them up and delivers them to our customers.”

The FedEx Small Business of the Week program rewards small business owners for describing the FedEx solution that delivers the most success for their business. This week’s FedEx Small Business of the Week nominees are:

Brower, Miller & Cole (Irvine, CA) – Brower, Miller & Cole, a full-service strategic marketing, advertising and public relations firm in Irvine.

NanoAndMore USA (Beaufort, SC) –NanoAndMore USA, the first distributor of AFM probes and specializing in Nanotechnology.

Dave and Pauls LLC (Missoula, MT) – Dave and Pauls LLC is a compound butter company in Missoula. They dub themselves as "Two Blokes Blending Butter" and specialize in making compound butter creations such as Green Garlic and Mighty Maple and selling them locally at farmer’s markets and stores.

Voting ends Monday, October 17, so McMurty is hoping local businesses in the region will get behind them and vote online. Nominees and winners are announced online every Tuesday. undefined

Editor’s Note: The Savannah Business Journal will let you know next week if he wins!

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