Piedmont Valley Truffles Phone System Success Story
 RingCentral Online spoke with NYC-based Aron Ponticelli of Piedmont Valley Truffles about how RingCentral helps him manage a business half-way across the country, in North Carolina.
Why RingCentral?
 AP: I think RingCentral is tremendous. I was partial to RingCentral because of the Inc. Magazine review [June 2006] that I read, but when I called, that's what got me. The customer service at RingCentral is just tremendous, you'd be surprised at how rude some of the other vendors are. RingCentral set up the service for me and showed me all the tools: for example, the Call Controller that pops up on my laptop when the phone rings, how I can check voicemails on the Web...I mean all of that is great for us because it gives our business the flexibility we need.
We hear that a lot.
AP: I'm between North Carolina and New York a few times a month, and I really see RingCentral as one of my primary tools, along with my Blackberry and my laptop.
Because you're in New York City and your business partner/father is in North Carolina, it must be challenging to manage your business affairs.
 AP: Yes. What I like is that RingCentral keeps a detailed Call Log. We're both on the road a bit. I'm a little more organized, but sometimes my father is out in the field or on the road and he loses people's phone numbers or the numbers get lost in his cell phone and he loses voicemails. This way, we can both keep track of calls. We get email alerts of new voicemails; I get them on my Blackberry. And I can see calls coming in, and seeing calls come in is something I really like because truffles are not my full-time job yet; I have another full-time job.
So separating all these aspects of your life is critical for you.
AP: Yes, having the ability to see calls coming in for Piedmont Valley Truffles is great so I know how to handle the calls appropriately.
You're also setting up a truffle distribution organization with the other farmers, and you plan to sell on the Web with your RingCentral toll free number.
 AP: There are a lot of small growers now, with between one and a half acre to 3 acres of trees, and they're going to sell their truffles to the local restaurants so the market is going to get saturated - then they'll look for someone to sell their truffles outside of that area. What we're going to do is set up a consortium or a co-op and sell the truffles for them. The way I see it, why give your profits to a middle man? The farmers always get paid the least amount of money, and there's no reason we can't run the demand side of the business as well. Chefs and restaurants in New York City are just the beginning. I'll sell on the Web, and obviously the toll free number from RingCentral is going to become more important there. It's where your higher margins are made because you're selling wholesale - about $800 a pound wholesale. That's where the money is made.
How will RingCentral help you manage all of this?
AP: It takes about three to four years to cultivate truffles and we expect an influx of calls during the next truffle season, December through March. As a way for us to manage things, we have the option to not take some of those calls and let them go to voicemail, which will be emailed to us. We can then look at the Call Log to see who called and when the calls came in. I have calls ring to my home and my cell and wherever else I may be. Also, I will have all of my truffle business calls and faxes centralized. I don't want calls going to my cell phone's voicemail or a different business email because I don't want them co-mingled with my other calls. It also allows me to make sure that other employees in the company are following up with important callers.
Your employees will also use RingCentral?
 AP: We have a lot of farm workers we need to contact, and we will have a customer service department. And I really see that as we expand, RingCentral will be growing with us. I would like to build a sales team, who will be traveling around, and I know I'm going to be traveling all over, so to be able to manage that process is great.
I didn't realize truffles were being cultivated in North Carolina. Typically, this is not a product produced in the US.
 AP: We're really finding that where grapes for wine can be cultivated pretty successfully is where black truffles can be as well. There's been a lot of success in cultivating truffles in the mid-Atlantic states on both sides of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which has an agreeable "terroir": the soil, sunshine, wind factors, etc. North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee share similar attributes to southern France and northern Italy.
How do you cultivate and harvest truffles?
 AP: We bought seedlings inoculated with Tuber melanosporum, the Perigord truffle, from our partner Franklin Garland who was the first to bring inoculated seedlings to the US. He bought the process from the French in the early 1980s. You're taking either oak or hazelnut trees about a couple of weeks old.
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