Gerald Chamales
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“Persistence is the key to success.” So says Gerald “Jerry” Chamales, a man whose story epitomizes the American dream. The once homeless recovering alcoholic and drug addict founded Rhinotek Computer Products in his Venice, California studio apartment in 1982 with just a credit card, a dream and the will to make that dream a reality. Chamales attributes his success entirely to the people around him. “I couldn’t have done it with out the love of my family, the support of my friends and the dedication and hard work of my co-workers.”
Since then Rhinotek, which combines direct telemarketing and the internet with the manufacturing and remanufacturing of laser printer cartridges, has flourished into a multi-million dollar enterprise—providing the first nationally branded compatible ink and laser cartridge for the US consumer.
Chamales also purchased a Toronto based recycling company that, combined with Rhinotek, employed nearly six-hundred people while generating in excess of fifty-seven million dollars in annual revenue.
Chamales' business achievements have gained national recognition. He was awarded the prestigious Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award for Business Service and Rhinotek was named to Industry Week Magazine’s list of the Top 25 US Manufacturers. Not only has his work been featured on CNBC, ABC, CNN, NBC Nightly News and The O’Reilly Factor, Chamales has appeared on the front page of The Wall Street Journal and has been profiled by Time Magazine, Success Magazine, Business Week and Fortune as well.
In 2001 Chamales teamed with Lewa Conservancy in Northern Kenya to help save the nearly extinct wild rhino of Africa. An estimated three-hundred-fifty of the Fortune 500 companies use Rhinotek products, with a portion of the money from each order going to the Conservancy.
In 2006 Chamales sold Rhinotek to a private equity firm and the Canadian recycling company to seven-billion dollar industry giant, Okidata. With the sale of the two businesses behind him, he founded Equity Value Group, a company specializing in investments and philanthropic causes. “It’s the dream of every successful entrepreneur to sell the business he or she founded while it’s thriving, and at an excellent profit. I was fortunate enough to do that, not once but twice.”
Born in 1951, he is the son of Tom Chamales, author of "Never So Few," which was adapted into a movie starring Frank Sinatra. A latch-key kid who lived almost the entire first decade of his life in a foster home, Chamales spent most of his teens and twenties battling alcohol and drugs. Then, in his mid-twenties, he cleaned up his act and hasn’t looked back.
Chamales not only rebuilt his life, but he’s helped to rebuild the lives of hundreds of others. One out of every three Rhinotek employees was a recovering alcoholic, recovering drug addict, or ex-con. “They’re coming out of a desperate situation and that’s what we look for” says Chamales, “People who are desperate to save their lives. They tend to work harder to prove themselves.”
An advocate for the homeless, Chamales is a board-member of the Midnight Mission in Los Angeles, a facility that provides recovery, transformation, hope and other needs such as food and shelter to homeless men and women in the city’s downtown area.
Chamales is also a frequent lecturer at the University of Southern California, where he shares his entrepreneurial insights, experiences and wisdom with both undergraduate and MBA students. “My philosophy is very simple” says the energetic entrepreneur, “It’s not where you start in business. It’s where you finish! That’s what I want them to know.”
Chamales lives in the LA suburb of Brentwood with Kathleen, his wife of twenty-three years, who is an active partner in his entrepreneurial and philanthropic activities. The couple’s son, Ryan, attends college in Chicago where his interests lay in music production.
