2017
Growing smart DataTrec, Hennes Art Co. share their successes, challenges for expansion
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ast month we introduced Minneapolis-based Hennes Art Co. and Eagan-based DataTrec as this year’s participants in the Upsize Growth Challenge. In the time since, Brian Anderson, president of DataTrec, and Greg Hennes, founder of Hennes Art, met again with the panel of experts, this time at a public event at the Minneapolis Club, where they again spelled out their growth questions and provided an update on progress since the private meeting six weeks earlier. Below is a look at where these companies came from and what they are trying to accomplish.
DataTrec
When Brian Anderson got out of college in 1982, he was dating a woman in town and his car was “going to heck.” So, he took a job in import-export sales that offered a company car and international travel. “It sounded like it had some flair to it,” he says. Every 18 months to two years later, he took a new job or move up in his existing role until 1990, when he started his own company, Anderson Air Cargo. Over the years, the company evolved. It began expanding service offices into international shipping and domestic trucking. Sept. 11 attacks changed the logistics industry significantly, he says. Regulatory compliance issues became more stringent and fuel costs went through the roof, making the economics of flying cargo in inefficient planes difficult. So, air freight went from 35 percent of his Eagan-based business to about 3 percent. Around the same time, what is now Anderson Cargo Services Inc. began building a business around more challenging logistics work related to the relocation of computers and servers. “Computers started to take over everything,” Anderson says. “It began with people reselling computers.”
Minneapolis is a big market for electronics, but the companies that use them don’t necessarily buy them here. They had to pick them up — and when they did, he says, they were typically not packaged well, if at all. Over the last decade, that evolved into the movement of higher and higher value equipment, such as data centers. As companies moved them offsite, Anderson Cargo would help the company reallocate them. It became a big enough part of the business where Anderson, at the beginning of this year, established DataTrec to handle that challenging cargo activity.
Provides an exit strategy
In addition to growth in a niche market, Anderson sees DataTrec as his opportunity for an exit strategy at some point. The difference between Anderson Cargo and DataTrec, he says, is like the difference between Dairy Queen and Bob and Cheryl’s Ice Cream. “Anderson Cargo has been a very good company,” he says, “It, I think, has been defined by others in business as what they would call a lifestyle company.” DataTrec has much broader appeal. The name isn’t tied to the family. “It’s very focused, very defined and it’s not tied to an individual,” he says.
The Growth Challenge
Anderson wants to see DataTrec grow substantially into 15 to 20 markets. He was seeking feedback on raising money to do so. Presently DataTrec operates as a brand of Anderson Cargo Services. They share staff. But he believes splitting off the specialty business provides a better opportunity for marketing those services, and he definitely sees DataTrec as the growth engine going forward.
by Andrew Tellijohn photographs by Tom Dunn 14
UPSIZE OCTOBER • NOVEMBER 2017
www.upsizemag.com