New Vivacity facility makes Greenville County an education technology hub

Vivacity, one of the fastest growing educational technology companies in the country, aims to make the Upstate an EdTech hub. It will celebrate its latest expansion Oct. 8 with a ribbon cutting ceremony at its new flagship facility in the Axial Crossroads logistics park in Piedmont near Interstate 185.

Moving its headquarters to Greenville and opening a new 67,000-square-foot distribution, assembly and support center is an important part of Vivacity’s growth strategy, according to CEO and founder Eli Maloley.

Booming market

Since its 2018 founding, Vivacity has grown to support more than 1 million devices spread across more than 2,000 school districts nationwide. The company has been guided by a simple goal: helping schools and school districts leverage limited resources to get the most out of their technology, Maloley said.

“School districts of course are always trying to do more with less … and every product and service that we’ve created has always sort of followed that same (mode of operation), which is, ‘how how can we help them stretch their budget?’” he said.

With the widespread deployment of Google-supported Chromebooks in K-12 classrooms around the country — by some estimates as many as 50 million — there has been a commensurate surge in demand for service and support for those devices.

That surge in demand for hardware and the expertise to help with rollout and subsequent servicing has helped drive Vivacity’s expansion to a nationwide footprint with facilities in St. Paul, MN, Chicago and Denver.

The company’s newest facility at 301 Piedmont Grove Park in the heart of Greenville County’s central industrial and logistics belt along the I-85 corridor will not only serve as an important shipping and assembly hub but will also form the center of Vivacity’s research and development efforts, Maloley said.

“This location in Greenville is our crown jewel,” he said. 

With initial staffing of about 100 employees and expectations that level could eventually grow to 400, the Greenville facility will become the company’s largest center for production, distribution and repairs. Maloley said research and development at the facility will help pioneer new methods of assembly and repair.

It will also be home to new laser etching equipment and a new vinyl wrapping printer. Those added capabilities will enable the company to offer school districts unique customization options.

Private company, public benefit

Underpinning Vivacity’s commitment to helping schools get the most out of their education technology is a corporate value system based on far more than maximizing the bottom line.

The company is unique in being the first and, so far, only Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) selling and supporting EdTech to the nation’s K-12 schools. Maloley said while he understands people starting businesses to achieve profits, pursuing that goal has never been one of his core values.

Instead, he wanted Vivacity and its people to be centered on what is known in the PBC world as the three bottom lines: people, planet, profit. Success is derived from building a team of like-minded people within the company dedicated to empowering educators and students to achieve success through sustainable technology.

Beyond that, Vivacity is also committed to giving back to the community through direct philanthropy and encouraging employees to pursue their own philanthropy, either financially or through volunteering with community organizations.

Vivacity and its employees support such local organizations as Mill Village Ministries, Front Porch Housing, the Julie Valentine Center and Loaves and Fishes, to name a few.

“That part has been really important to me … to take whatever resources we can put together and try to find a way to benefit the broader community,” Maloley said. “It’s just been a fantastic endeavor.”

As part of that value system, the company has also developed a program called Repair Academy which teaches students the skills necessary to maintain and repair the technology they use in the classroom. The program is provided at no cost to participating schools and involves a 60- to 100-hour curriculum.

The program not only helps schools save money but is also helping to build the talent pool our technology-driven society will need in the future, Maloley said.

“It’s just been a fantastic program overall,” he said. “We love the impact it’s making — we feel like it’s adding a ton of value.”

Vivacity PBC fast facts

As a Public Benefit Corporation, Vivacity and its employees have contributed:

• More than $850,000 in donated IT equipment
• More than 35,000 volunteer hours
• Supporting more than 2,000 school districts and community organizations nationwide, including 19 nonprofits in the Upstate