Evolution of an Enterprise, Chapter 11: Meet Me in St. Louis

The owners of Voyager Industries LLC have been spreading their wings in recent weeks.

When Josh Somers and Binh Uebinger started the airplane-detailing business just before the start of the year, their plan was to focus initially on southwest Missouri and build as much business as possible before branching into other parts of the region.

But an unexpected stroke of good fortune has the duo looking at regular business in St. Louis and the possibility of a permanent presence in the Gateway City.

Pounding the pavement

After cleaning a single-engine plane at the St. Charles Municipal Airport in late May, Somers and Uebinger drove out to Chesterfield’s Spirit of St. Louis Airport, owned by St. Louis County, to look for other opportunities.

They came across Houston-based Million Air Interlink Inc., a fixed-base-of-operations company with 32 locations across North America, including one in St. Louis.

The pair stopped in to leave a business card at the office, and within a week, they received a call from Steve Chase, the facility’s head of maintenance, offering them a trial run on two planes: a Challenger 600 – very similar to the aircraft owned by Springfield’s Prime Inc. for which the two have a cleaning contract – and a Falcon 20.

“I gave them an opportunity to take care of two of my airplanes, and they did a really good job,” Chase said. “As a matter of fact, I haven’t gotten them scheduled yet, but I need to call them and get them to come up here and do some more work.”

More work could include sealant on the planes to protect their new paint jobs from fading due to ultraviolet light.

Chase told the business partners that Voyager Industries’ work costs less than half what similar detailing businesses in the St. Louis area are charging. Voyager charged $800 to clean the two Million Air planes, and Somers said they can keep their costs low because of lack of overhead.

“We didn’t go out and hire somebody to do the work for us,” Somers said. “We’re salesmen-owner-operators, which means we have no overhead, and we have very low material costs.”

On standby

The Million Air job could lead to other opportunities for Voyager; Somers said Chase is friends with the head of maintenance for NetJets, one of the world’s largest private fleets. Pilots buy “shares” in the company’s planes that guarantee them a certain number of hours of plane availability each month.

“What it means is that they always have planes stationed throughout the country, so that if there’s a mechanical problem or weather issues, they can always get another one to an owner,” Somers said. “Spirit of St. Louis happens to always have a jet on the ground with a pilot on standby, waiting, so it’s a perfect opportunity to polish their jets.”

The duo is trying to schedule a time to talk to NetJets executives about possible work, Somers said.

The Million Air job also could lead to a permanent Voyager office in Million Air’s 70,000-square-foot St. Louis facility, though right now the pair said they don’t know whether that would mean one of them working from St. Louis or hiring another employee to handle the additional workload.

While Voyager’s initial intent was to stay local, Uebinger said the out-of-town opportunities couldn’t be ignored.

“We took a very laid-back initial approach to marketing in St. Louis, and it just worked,” Uebinger said. “The opportunities just popped up earlier than anticipated.”

Closer to home, work is growing as well.

Voyager got its first bite on the targeted mass mailing it sent to 760 local pilots and plane owners in May; Tony Stubblefield, managing partner of Reliable Toyota, Lexus, BMW, Scion Superstore in Springfield, hired Voyager to clean his single-engine Piper Archer.

Somers said the single job, which netted the duo $200, paid for the cost of the entire mailing.

Voyager also is still hoping to secure business with Springfield charter company OzAir; OzAir co-owner Mark Burgess said his company still uses Distinct Detail LLC to clean and detail its cars but has not chosen a company for detail work on its charter planes.