BY JEFFREY KELLEY
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Mar 23, 2006

Check out Joel Erb's to-do list:

Mid-May: Launch second company.

May 12: Go to The Jefferson Hotel, pick up regional Young Entrepreneur of the Year award from Small Business Administration.

May 14: Graduate college.
"Mid-May, kind of everything happens," said Erb, the 22-year-old founder, president and chief executive of Inet Network Inc., a downtown Web-design and marketing firm. "It'll be pretty crazy."

Erb has been running the company since he was 15. This month, the Small Business Administration decided he is the best of the young entrepreneurs in the region that includes Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania.

As he has pursued a business degree from the University of Richmond, Inet Network has morphed from a Web site design company into one that provides a full range of marketing and communications services.

But the company name is still too tech-y.

"Inet Network sounds too much like a Web company, which is what it was founded to do," Erb said.

This spring, he will launch a new entity called Muroe Creative, a firm that will concentrate exclusively on corporate branding, logo design and graphics for everything from brochures to billboards.

"It's just a natural move to split those services off and take Inet back to what it was founded to do," he said, "and allow Muroe to continue with the more creative side of things."

Demand for Inet's work has expanded in the past few months, Erb said, to the point that he had to redesign business processes "to handle the load that was coming our way."

But while there have been a lot of new jobs, "we didn't get too many that we couldn't handle," he said.

Erb has worked with local firms such as Capri Jewelers and plant shop The Grower's Exchange to create e-commerce Web sites and marketing plans.

His work doesn't stop in Virginia. Erb plans to open an office in the Washington area or one closer to his New York customers.

Erb is reluctant to give sales figures at the six-employee firm, but says revenue is "in the high six figures."

In production is an e-commerce Web site for Peter-Blair, the upscale men's clothing store on Grove Avenue in Richmond.

"It's mind-boggling that he is a senior at UR and knows this much," said Dick Fowlkes, president of Peter-Blair. "He knows what he's working with, what he's talking about -- I am totally computer illiterate, and he totally makes me feel OK about it."

copyright © 2005 Inet Network, Inc.