Edco Documents buys records-storage competitor

Edco, a Springfield-based document conversion and storage company, 1351 N. Belcrest Ave., negotiated with Axio for several years before agreeing on an undisclosed price in January, according to Chief Operating Officer Jim Horton.

“This industry, like many industries, is consolidating,” said Jay Garnett, one of three former Axio owners. “We found it increasingly difficult to compete with larger competitors like Edco. There were just a lot of similarities between the two companies, and it just was a good fit.”

Axio was founded by Doug Rideout in 1989 as Advanced Records Storage. Garnett became owner nearly a decade later and took on Matt Powell and Terry Oertwig as partners in 2001 and 2002, respectively. The firm became Axio in 2002.

Edco, established in 1961, had about 350 clients before the acquisition, with 90 percent of its business coming from hospitals, according to Horton. The acquisition gives the company about 200 more clients.

Edco also has more than 100,000 boxes in storage at SecureStore, its 92,000-square-foot storage facility in Springfield Underground.

See SBJ’s April 16 issue for more on this story.