When Tommy Hodinh left Vietnam for the United States. in 1972, he was focused on obtaining a solid education and starting a career — both of which he accomplished with a degree from The University of Texas at El Paso and a promising career with IBM.

After spending 15 years in various roles with IBM, Hodinh decided it was time to pursue his dreams of starting his own enterprise. He immediately founded MagRabbit® Inc., ultimately turning his creation into a leading global third party logistics/transportation provider to Fortune 1000 companies.

As Hodinh built strong customer relationships, he always allowed his firm's offerings to evolve and grow in a manner that best served the clients' needs, in addition to enhancing MagRabbit's capacity. His business philosophy is "One idea is not enough." For instance, MagRabbit's success has spun off into several other ventures, including MagRabbit-Global Software Ltd., MagRabbit-AIW L.L.C., MagRabbit-Staffing L.L.C., MagRabbit-Dedicated Fleet L.L.C. and VQ Partners L.L.C.

As the economy has sputtered over the past few years, the MagRabbit Global Software Service division has led the way. Although a number of companies outsource their programming to India, China or Brazil, Hodinh saw an opportunity to leverage his relationships in Vietnam to effectively develop custom applications software for the U.S. and Japanese markets. "We set up an offshore development center to support our organizational goals and provide a new layer of diversification in the company's offering," he said. "As a result, we are able to provide a cost savings of roughly 35 percent over competitors in India and China."

However, the purpose in launching the MagRabbit Global Software Services group was not just to establish a channel to sell offshore services, Hodinh explained. "Our mixed onshore and offshore business model is a key factor for our competitiveness within this growing market," he said. "The entire purpose behind establishing MagRabbit Global Software was to continue enhancing our existing customer relationships through a desired service that many firms cannot realistically afford to handle in-house."

In creating, maintaining and operating each MagRabbit division, Hodinh is diligent in making sure the firm's processes and people are second to none. "We enter each relationship with integrity and pride ourselves in being easy to do business with," he said. "We consistently invest in human capital, as well as tools, to build our capacity to better serve the client. We know that having the capacity to serve our clients is extremely important."

Hodinh and MagRabbit have received numerous awards over the years, including National Asian Entrepreneur of the Year, National Minority Supplier Development Council® Supplier of the Year, NMSDC Corporate Plus® membership, Emerging 10 award by Houston Minority Business Council, two-time Southwest Minority Supplier Development Council Supplier of the Year, U.S. Small Business Administration Administrator's Award of Excellence and U.S. Department of Commerce Minority Business Development Agency National Director's Pioneer Award, as well as Dell Worldwide Procurement Supplier Award.