March 11, 2014

UBL Interactive Selects Charleston for Global Tech Team Location

Shelia Watson  /  Charleston Digital Corridor

UBL Interactive, Inc. (OTCBB/QB: UBLI), a global leader in local and mobile search visibility for businesses since 2007, has selected the Flagship2 business center, the Charleston Digital Corridor's incubator/high tech hub, as the new base of operations for its international technical development team.

Headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., UBL Interactive serves more than 200,000 businesses across North America, the United Kingdom and Australia, helping the businesses and their brands to be found in local searches and improve visibility and customer connections across various platforms and media. UBL's customer base includes such companies as Wells Fargo, Progressive Insurance, Yodle and Deluxe Corporation.

Doyal Bryant, UBL's chief executive officer, said the company took some time for the location search, which included areas such as Atlanta and Denver. The company selected Charleston primarily because of the City's commitment to supporting and nurturing high-growth technology companies.

"Charlotte has a lot of growth going on, and we couldn't find the resources we needed," Bryant said. In particular the company was searching for talent. "Here we found highly talented and motivated people – and they want to stay in Charleston."

The company is expanding its operations to support its growing base of international customers, which Bryant said will double within the year.

UBL Interactive owns and operates the Universal Business Listing service, which provides business identity management tools for businesses of all sizes, as well as SEO providers, advertising agencies and interactive marketers to help their customers distribute their business details as a trusted source across search engines, online Yellow Pages directories, 411 directory assistance, social networks and mobile devices. The company also offers reputation monitoring tools and a variety of premium Local SEO optimization services.

"The Digital Corridor's Flagship facilities are extraordinary, providing our team with everything necessary to launch our business operations with virtually little to no down time," Bryant said.

Bryant especially found attractive the Flagship's enterprise-class business and technology services; modern, well-appointed professional office and conference space; and a built-in community of like-minded, high energy people, which he said "made it an obvious decision to choose Charleston."

"By assimilating into the Flagship culture and hiring qualified CODEcamp graduates, there is no doubt that UBL will help to further validate our community-sponsored technical education model, while also providing invaluable perspective on how we may make it even stronger," said Ernest Andrade, founder and director of the Charleston Digital Corridor.

Situated in downtown Charleston, the Flagship and Flagship2 serve as the center of the nationally recognized Charleston Digital Corridor initiative – a creative effort to attract, nurture and promote Charleston's knowledge economy by facilitating a business, physical and social environment where technology companies can thrive.

Made possible by the City of Charleston and managed by the Charleston Digital Corridor Foundation, the Flagship is also home to CODEcamp,__where students can obtain independent instruction in Web and mobile software technologies.

"When you come to our corporate headquarters, we look very corporate, and what we want is a work environment that people want to be in," Bryant said. "We love the feel of these incubation places, the coding and tech environment. And CODEcamp came out of here. That's a great advantage for us because that gives us access to the best and brightest."

UBL has already recruited people from CODEcamp and plans to hire several more. The space UBL has leased in Flagship2 has total capacity for 20 people.

"One of the things we like about this is it allows us to expand rapidly," Bryant said. "It's a couple of hours away from the corporate headquarters and it's easy to get to. Plus – it's Charleston. Everyone wants to visit here. And the great thing is Charleston isn't as well known yet as a digital place. But it will be. No doubt about that."

The Charleston office will provide technical support for several hundred workers across UBL's other offices. For more information on the Company, visit www.ublinteractive.com or www.ubl.org.