Longtime local marketing firm WebStrategies to rebrand as Geear

WebStrategies (soon to be Geear) CEO Chris Leone (Courtesy Chris Leone)

A fateful meeting almost 10 years ago has led to a new name for longtime local digital marketing firm. 

Midlothian-based WebStrategies, an around 50-person company founded in 2004 by Neal Lappe, is rebranding early next month as Geear (with two e’s). 

Geear stands for “growth, essentialism, empathy, accountability and doing what’s right” and harkens to 2017, when the company was looking to establish a clearer set of corporate values. The idea came from looking at Post-it notes scattered on the wall and a list of ideas that included those five nouns, said CEO Chris Leone. 

“I kind of saw that, if we move this around, suddenly it spells Geear,” Leone said. “It’s something that people could remember.” 

Geear has been the company’s mantra since then, but with the phrase taking off as a way to assess new hiring candidates and office performance, Leone had the idea more recently to let the name take the company into its next phase. 

“WebStrategies, we’ve had that name since the beginning. It was great for the time, but I feel like we need something we can move into the future with,” Leone said. “What if we did something bold and courageous, and renamed our company after our core values? I’ve never heard of anyone doing that before.”

When founded 21 years ago, WebStrategies began as a web development company. It now primarily works with businesses to bring more traffic to their websites. The company primarily focuses on clients in industries such as credit unions, business-to-business manufacturing and security providers. 

The company also specializes in getting clients set up on the software platform HubSpot. 

Four years in, Lappe brought on Leone, who had been his neighbor and later became president of the company when it absorbed Midlothian peer Impression Marketing in 2016. 

Chris Leone, left, and WebStrategies founder Neal Lappe in 2020. (Courtesy Kennedy Carey)

Leone said that as he came onto the team in around 2008, the company had begun shifting more into the marketing industry, and in 2017, it decided to focus on specific industries as clients. 

“What we found is as the internet matured … it wasn’t enough to be a generalist at this stuff; you had to specialize both in the work you did and who you did it for,” he said. “That’s when things really started to take off.” 

Leone took over as CEO in early 2020, and later that year took over majority ownership of the company from Lappe, who remains on as CFO. 

“When (COVID-19) and 2020 happened, so many of our clients started to push more into that digital space, and then our growth was 40%, 30%, 25% year-over-year,” Leone said. “That’s when we really started to take off. Even this year we’re looking at double-digit growth.” 

WebStrategies has worked with clients such as Greater Texas Credit Union, Virginia Green lawn care and Chartway Federal Credit Union, according to its website. 

WebStrategies began the process to change the name around a year ago, Leone said. It will become Geear on Aug. 5. 

WebStrategies is located at 14241 Midlothian Turnpike. It has nearly 50 employees. 

Leone declined to share current revenue numbers for WebStrategies. Lappe previously said they were at $2 million when the company absorbed Impression Marketing in 2016.

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