NNBW staff, 12/4/2006
Offsite Data Depot’s methodical plans for growth will take a big step as the
Carson City company prepares to lease space for the document-storage
operation that will provide a second major source of revenue.
The company, which moved to Carson City from the Bay Area, has spent
the last seven months building the other side of its business — computer
consulting, on-line computer backups and e-mail filtering. Those
operations require less capital than the document-storage business, says
Brian W. Olson, a partner in Offsite Data Depot with Gerd Poppinga.
Because the partners are building the business with their personal savings,
the cautious strategy is particularly important, Olsen says.
Within the next few days, the company expects to sign a lease on a 12,500-
square-foot facility near the Carson City Airport. There, it will begin
offering document-storage services — securing boxes of paperwork for
companies that have neither the space nor the inclination to store them in
their own offices.
Usually, Olson says, document-storage companies such as the international
player Iron Mountain Inc. target markets with at least 200,000 population.
Olson and Poppinga think their company can turn a profit in the much smaller Carson City market because Offsite Data Depot is offering other
services as well. And the fact that Carson City is home to the state
government means there are plenty of organizations generating boxes of
paperwork.
Olson says the company expects to draw most of its document-storage
business from the Carson Valley and Eagle Valley. Customers for its
technology services, meanwhile, are located throughout the West.
Offsite Data Depot expects to open its secure data storage facility in
February. As the operation gets established, the company — currently
staffed by only its two partners — expects to add two or three additional
workers.
Olson previously spent 13 years as chief technologist for a major financial
services company. Poppinga was chief technology officer for a machining
company and founded Data Storage Associates, a document-imaging firm
that he moved to Dayton from northern California in 2004. That firm was
merged into Offsite Data Depot this year.
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