Rockfish Interactive Launching Silver Joe’s, Arvest iPhone Apps

Rogers Tech Firm Grew To 65 Employees, More Than $5 Million In Revenue

By Lana Flowers

Sunday, November 22, 2009

• Print item
• E-mail
• Share

ROGERS — The latest iPhone application from Rockfish Interactive in Rogers will help Arvest Bank customers find the nearest bank branch or automatic teller machine in four states.

Another new iPhone application will allow Silver Joe’s customers to place coffee orders, pay for them, then drive through to pick up orders at the Pinnacle Hills Parkway location in Rogers.

The Silver Joe’s coffee ordering application will be free and is in beta testing now, said Kenny Tomlin, Rockfish Interactive founder and chief executive officer. He expects to submit the Silver Joe’s application to Apple iTunes by early December.

The Arvest Bank free iPhone application became available Friday, said Dana Sargent, Rockfish Interactive director of public relations.

Arvest is the first bank to have its own specific iPhone application, said Jason Kincy, vice president of alternative delivery for Arvest Bank. He does marketing, public relations and web communications for the bank. Arvest has about 14,000 mobile banking customers and about half use iPhones, he said.

There are other mobile banking applications available, but the Arvest application will use the iPhone geographic positioning system. It will determine where a customer is, then pull information about the closest automatic teller machines and branch locations, Kincy said. The Arvest iPhone application also will show branch hours and give driving directions.

It was a natural for Arvest, based in Bentonville, to work with Rockfish, based in Rogers, Kincy said.

“They have worked with us on other projects and we have been happy with their work,” he said of Rockfish Interactive.

The technology firm started three years ago in a very small office along Dickson Street in Fayetteville, but now occupies the entire second story of a building along Horsebarn Road in western Rogers.

Advertising Age in September named Rockfish Interactive the small agency of the year.

“Rockfish has made a major contribution to (Wal-Mart’s) runaway success in grabbing market share in the online world while its competitors in the value-oriented space, like dollar stores and Costco, haven’t come close to nailing digital media,” an Advertising Age article stated.

Much of the Rockfish recognition comes from working with Wal-Mart and its supplier companies, Tomlin said.

Rockfish Interactive is behind the site for Elevenmoms, the mother/bloggers who write about bargains, personal finance, raising children and other topics at instoresnow.walmart.com/Community.aspx.

Rockfish also maintains the Wal-Mart news and public relations site at walmartstores.com.

That type of recognition wouldn’t continue if the work was not high quality, Tomlin said.

Rockfish Interactive also won a national award for their TidyTweet application at the 140 Twitter Conference in Los Angeles. TidyTweet eliminates tweets with curse words, so private and business users don’t have to see those words and tweets in their Twitter feeds.

Rockfish added 15 employees in the past three months, has 65 total employees and is hiring for at least six more positions, including a director of social media.

The firm increased revenue from about $600,000 annually 3.5 years ago to “well over $5 million” a year now, Tomlin said. He projects $7 million to $8 million in revenue this year.

Tomlin said Rockfish Interactive is exploring other technologies and programs to develop, such as online coupons and new ideas for mobile phone users.

Comments

To report abuse or misuse of this area please hit the "Suggest Removal" link in the comment to alert our online managers. Please read our comment policy.

Use the comment form below to begin a discussion about this content.