New Creature

Owners: Brad Jones and Patrick Sbarra

Address: 402 W. Stribling Drive,

Rogers, 72756

Phone: 501-636-7377

Hours: 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Monday-Friday

Start-up date: Sept. 1

Opening the doors to New Creature, Patrick Sbarra knew business would be good because a well-carved niche waited for the graphics-design business. Springing from Stribling Packaging, New Creature designs specific display packaging for all of the Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Sam’s Club stores around the nation.

Working in a 2,000-SF space, Sbarra and co-owner Brad Jones used more than $250,000 in start-up costs to finance the graphics technology.

Sbarra steps up to join his family’s assembly line as the third brother-in-law to own a business on a 30-acre piece of land. Each of the businesses manages packages for Wal-Mart products. Sbarra’s company, the smallest of the three, designs the packaging for the products to be shipped to the stores. Stribling Packaging manufactures the packaging, and another of Sbarra’s family members presides over CargoNet to distribute the displays around the nation.

Sbarra relishes his portion of the process, working with each supplier to design “compelling point-of-purchase displays.”

“It’s fun, exciting, creative and challenging,” Sbarra says. “It’s the exciting part of the packaging business.”

New Creature also handles independent graphics jobs, but the Wal-Mart and Sam’s accounts take up about 80 percent of the work load, Sbarra says.