Son of Lowcountry returns with company in tow

Aaron LaBerge left South Carolina 14 years ago to join the cutting edge of software engineering on the West Coast. In Seattle, where he designed major media properties' first websites, and then in Connecticut, where he rose to senior vice president at ESPN, LaBerge built a gold-plated tech resume.

Others might have cruised for a few more decades in the executive lane and enjoyed a comfortable retirement in New England. But not LaBerge.

Instead, he left ESPN and moved into a century- old ax factory about a dozen miles north of the sports network's Bristol campus to launch Fanz-ter, an e-commerce website and mobile applications development company.

His corporate post was leaning more toward television and away from the programming and entrepreneurship he preferred and an old boss and mentor, who is one of Fanzter's investors, struck a chord when he accused LaBerge of "sitting behind a desk, getting lazy."

"People thought I was nuts when I left," said LaBerge, 38.

That was four years ago and this past weekend, after going west as a young man, a son of the Lowcountry returns as CEO of a promising young company. On Monday, the Goose Creek native found himself amid boxes and bubble wrap in a 600-square-foot room on East Bay Street, setting up Fanzter's new headquarters.

LaBerge, wearing cargo shorts and flip flops, never thought he'd move back to the Lowcountry, not to mention return with an eight-employee company in tow. But the enactment of a "nexus" tax in Connecticut earlier this summer forced him to look at his home state, one of six that had considered and rejected the tax on Internet sales, and seeing Charleston with new eyes, he saw a new city.

"To me, it feels like Austin, Texas, did six or seven years ago," LaBerge said Monday in the common room of the industrial chic Flagship2 business incubator, referring to a harmonious mix of artists and technologists. "It really feels a lot like that here."

That's what Charleston Digital Corridor director Ernest Andrade, whose office is down the hall from Fanzter's, likes to hear. For the past decade, Andrade has been trying to attract knowledge-based companies, with their capital investment and high-paying jobs, to Charleston. He called LaBerge a "poster child" for that effort.

"It's good to bring him back home," Andrade quipped.

After hearing about Fanzter's suite of products and LaBerge's plans, one begins to understand Andrade's enthusiasm about the newest tenant in the updated former home of Channel 5.

Coolspotters, the company's centerpiece product, encourages users to upload photos of products – often celebrities wearing particular brands of clothing or accessories – and label the products. LaBerge and his colleagues then provide a "buy it" link that directs the potential customers to Nordstrom, Gucci, Amazon or wherever they can purchase the item.

LaBerge said the company, which has A-list venture capital and angel investor backing, has not made money in any year so far but "we skirt with profitability each month."

"Right now, we're still focused on getting to scale," said LaBerge. "But yeah, it's going to be big business."

Fanzter's other products are best-selling mobile apps Coolpapers, which makes iPhone or iPad wallpaper out of the Coolspotters photos; Streaks, which allows users to track progress on day-to-day goals; and Summizer, which filters and searches Twitter.

These are fairly simple concepts, LaBerge admits, but often the seeming no-brainers are the big winners.

LaBerge puttered around Fanzter's new workspace with one other engineer Monday, installing a 58-inch flatscreen television and supplying the shelf beneath it with Ramen noodles. A red Formula one car and a yellow Lamborghini were displayed around LaBerge's corner desk. Four others will move south in the next month or two, and two others will work remotely.

Tenants of the city's Flagship 2, which also include public relations and construction companies as well as other computer firms, are allowed to stick around for 36 months, LaBerge said. But, with a month-to-month lease, expansion plans and some pretty marketable ideas, Fanzter will likely move before the three-year deadline.

"If things go well, we won't be here long," he said.

Under other circumstance, a promising new business tenant talking about moving out less than a week after moving in would be a bad thing. But given the point of the place, that's more of what Andrade likes to hear.