In Rhode Island, a policy fight can turn on a fact sheet, a coalition and the order in which the phone calls are made. Advocacy Solutions has spent two decades turning that choreography into a business.
He did not plan to become an entrepreneur. Then the financial system cracked, a Fortune 1000 client called, and a Providence communications shop discovered that small teams can be useful precisely when the stakes get large.
David Gosselin and Olivia King had no management résumé, so they made creators an unusually simple offer: try us without getting trapped. That low-risk beginning became a talent business built around fair rates, selective partnerships and the delicate economics of audience trust.
A Providence pasta maker turned a neighborhood specialty into groceries, catering and gifts. Its next sale might be a tray of chicken Parmesan or an entire Italian night in a box.
A trio of Rhode Islanders slashed vodka's proof, slapped a nutrition label on the bottle, and called it the Moderation Movement. Here is how the math worked - and what it cost them.
It started as a modest state bet on Rhode Island's innovation economy. Twenty-five years and 144 companies later, Slater is the quiet engine underneath the state's startup scene - and it keeps recycling its wins.
HAVERHILL is a fifth-generation, family-owned fine jewelry company based in Warren, Rhode Island that makes personalized 14k gold birthstone jewelry to order. Founded by designer Haverhill Leach in 2013 and run alongside CEO Andrej Strojin, the brand pairs an in-house, waterfront studio with a direct-to-consumer, Shopify-powered storefront, shipping custom rings, necklaces, bracelets and earrings in a matter of days. It has landed on the Inc. 5000 list of America's fastest-growing private companies three years running.
Narragansett Brewing Company is New England's storied lager brand, founded in 1890 in Rhode Island and once the largest brewery in the region. After the brand nearly vanished in the early 2000s, Rhode Island native Mark Hellendrung and a group of local investors bought it back in 2005, rebuilt its reputation around the classic Lager and the 'Hi, Neighbor, have a Gansett!' slogan, and in 2021 finally brought brewing home to a new 18,000-square-foot brewery and taproom in Providence's Fox Point neighborhood. Today it is an independent craft brewer producing roughly 100,000 barrels a year.