New relocation company launches Ann Arbor headquarters on South State Street
300 Decisions, a newly formed relocation management company, opened its headquarters in Ann Arbor this month as the owners eye national expansion.
Launched by Helen Dennis and her son, Matt, the company coordinates all the logistics of businesses’ relocations, from formulating a moving strategy to finding a physical move provider and notifying customers of an address change.
300 Decisions opened an office in Ann Arbor's South State Commons.
Photo from loopnet.com
Their motto: "Relocate without disruption."
“Our whole focus is to help (businesses) look at every aspect of their organization to make sure we’ve identified what they need to do to be up and running Monday morning (after a move),” Helen said.
300 Decisions — named after the “hundreds and hundreds of tasks” involved in a relocation — opened its Ann Arbor headquarters in the South State Commons complex at 2723 S. State St. in August. At the same time, it opened an office in downtown Chicago.
The goal, Helen said, is to establish offices in 15 metro locations across the U.S. in the next three years and take the company from four employees to 200 employees.
“Ann Arbor will be our leadership center,” she said. “We feel that Ann Arbor has a lot of talent and we feel it’s a good place for us to be in the Midwest, near an airport. Quite frankly, it’s a great entrepreneurial climate.”
Helen — who has been in the relocation business for more than 20 years — most recently developed a national relocation practice with commercial real estate firm CBRE. Her clients have included Borders bookstore, Domino’s Pizza, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Ford Motor Co.
“We’ve seen clients as small as 50 to 100 employees…to as large as 10,000 employees,” Matt said.
But launching their own smaller relocation company has allowed for more flexibility, he said.
“We felt that with a smaller company we have that flexibility and can change course with any decision we make instantaneously,” he said.
Even though Ann Arbor has experienced a spike in business activity recently, Helen said they’re not counting on having a large number of customers in the immediate area.
Instead, the satellite offices across the U.S. will bring in the clients — especially once people discover this type of service exists, she said.
“There’s no national brand to help companies (relocate), and I think it’s a service that we have found people often didn’t know existed,” she said. “Once they use us, people say, “We couldn’t have done this without you.’”
She added: “That’s where we find the greatest joy: being able to save our clients from chaos.”
Lizzy Alfs is a business reporter for AnnArbor.com. Reach her at 734-623-2584 or email her at lizzyalfs@annarbor.com. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/lizzyalfs.