Chicago Company Wins Recognition from the Queen of England

News of their Queen’s Award reached Storm Interface employees as they celebrated the company’s twentieth birthday. Success did not come easily to this small but highly innovative company.

Chicago, IL (PRWEB) April 30, 2006 -- How does a company in the suburbs of Chicago win recognition from the Queen of England? By being an integral part of a UK-based, world-class organization that has achieved remarkable growth in revenue and job creation.

The Queen's Awards for Enterprise are the UK's most prestigious awards for business performance. The award is recognized worldwide as an outstanding achievement given to only the most successful organizations.

News of their Queen’s Award reached Storm Interface employees as they celebrated the company’s twentieth birthday. Success did not come easily to this small but highly innovative company. In March 1986, with just three full time employees working in a corner of a designer’s studio, the company filed patent applications for a new switch technology - a technology that would eventually place them in the front line of the fight against credit card fraud.

Storm’s toughened keypads, keyboards and display screens may seem familiar but the company’s name is not well known. Some of us use their products on a daily basis; at quick service restaurants, at gas pumps, at information kiosks in airports and at credit card payment terminals. However their products are often highly visible but anonymous components of equipment manufactured by other companies.

Peter Ward (Storm’s CEO) comments, “Back in 1996 our marketing team predicted that PIN numbers would be used to secure credit card transactions. They also predicted that credit card terminals would not be confined to air-conditioned stores and brightly lit supermarkets. Card payment terminals would be located in exposed, outdoor locations such as gas stations, car parks, drive-thru restaurants, and railway stations”.

Storm understood that these Unattended Payment Terminals (referred to as UPTs by the credit card industry) would become a target for organized criminals and terrorist organizations. Credit cards which held data in a magnetic stripe were too easy to copy (or clone), leading to increasing levels of fraud. In Europe a fraudulent transaction using cloned cards occurred every eight seconds. As predicted, this wave of fraud caused the payment card industry to adopt the emerging and more secure ‘Chip and PIN’ card technology.

Storm were ahead of the wave. They had recognized an emerging opportunity and begun the development of highly secure PIN entry keypads. As PIN became the world’s preferred method of card validation the demand for Storm’s products grew rapidly. Storm’s secure PINpads and toughened numeric displays are now used by many of the worlds leading manufacturers of card payment terminals. Continued innovation and development has lead to a second generation of products designed to provide even greater levels of protection for credit and debit card users. As new security standards are mandated by the payment card industry, these new products are predicted to sustain the company’s revenue growth.

“The recession that killed so many fledgling companies taught us that we had to continually astonish our customers (and competitors) by innovation and by the speed at which these innovations were brought to the market”, says Ward. Even now, as UK manufacturing industry faces so many challenges, Storm’s sales, profitability and reputation continue to grow.

“Over the years, we’ve also learned the value of running a lean organization,” Ward continued. Now, with 46 permanent employees, the company retains its inventive spirit. “Being small does not prevent a company achieving world class performance. It can make it easier; but you must have the right people!” It is clear Ward firmly believes that Storm have the ‘right people’.

It is somewhat ironic that the company’s products are more widely recognized outside the UK. Most Americans are familiar with Storm’s hardware because they use it to pay for food at ‘America’s favorite drive-in’ restaurant chain. Storm’s PIN entry keypads feature prominently in the restaurant’s television advertising campaign, seen every day by millions of consumers.

Americans use Storm keyboards at the nation’s largest superstores to fill-in applications and search inventory. Storm keypads are used to select wash programs and enter coupon codes at the local car wash. War memorials across the USA contain electronic directories navigated by use of Storm keypads and keyboards. Even phone card vending machines feature Storm keypads. In the past two years over 100,000 Storm products have been installed in the USA alone.

For more than ten years Swedish drivers have encountered Storm keypads at service stations as they fill their cars and in Iran Storm keypads and displays are being installed to control the allocation of state subsidized fuel. “In overseas markets, our products are widely recognized and even regarded as familiar icons of the urban landscape”, admits Peter Jarvis (Storm’s Senior Executive VP).

The announcement of their Queen’s Award for Enterprise (International Trade) is evidence that Storm’s impressive performance has been noticed. As credit and debit card terminals are installed in more unattended or exposed locations, Storm’s name and products are set to become increasingly familiar. While the future of Storm Interface lies in the untapped potential of the North American market, the company’s feet are still firmly planted on English soil.

For more information or images contact:
In the UK
Peter Jarvis
Tel: +44 (0) 1895 431421

In the US
Jason Kandik
tel: +1 630 469-2981

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