Evolution of an Enterprise, Chapter 16: In the Shadow of the Arch

A chance encounter has led to the first office outside of Springfield for Voyager Industries LLC.

The airplane-detailing company has signed a month-to-month lease in St. Louis, a space of just a few hundred square feet, in the offices of fixed-base-of-operations company Million Air Interlinc at Spirit of St. Louis Airport.

The relationship with Million Air began after Voyager co-founders Binh Uebinger and Josh Somers went to the Gateway City to clean a private plane and stopped by the airport on a whim to drop off a business card.

A call from Million Air St. Louis Director of Maintenance Steve Chase led to a test cleaning job, followed by a facility tour with Operations Manager Ron Fry Jr.

“We had it in the back of our mind to open an office (at Spirit of St. Louis),” Uebinger said. “We mentioned it to Steve Chase, just because we saw all of those offices sitting there empty, and we thought, “What better place for a company like ours to have an office than right off the runway?”

After getting the thumbs-up from Million Air executives, Voyager will move into its $325-a-month space Sept. 1.

“Our office is perfect because right outside our door you see a huge Falcon 50 and a helicopter that are co-renting space there,” Uebinger said.

“There’s two customers that we’ll more than likely get just because we’re there.”

Uebinger said having a permanent office in the airport adds credibility with pilots who may be unfamiliar with the duo’s work.

“We don’t want to have to just hang out in the lobby like we do in Springfield,” Somers added, referring to the company’s current situation at Springfield-Branson National Airport’s general aviation facility.

Fry said the location presents an opportunity for quite a bit of new work.

“This airport is pretty busy – there’s more than 100 jets and turboprops based here to solicit,” Fry said. “There is some competition – there are three or four (detailing) companies here – but it makes a lot of sense to have an office.”

Meanwhile, the fledgling business is trying to secure contracts with three charter companies at the St. Louis airport: NetJets, Citation Shares and Flexjet. Fry noted that NetJets is one of Million Air’s customers in St. Louis.

Keeping up

Uebinger estimates Voyager could gain five to six planes a day if those contracts come through.

If that work comes around, Somers said it could create a new problem: having too much work to handle.

“It’s a better problem to have than figuring out how to put gas in the tank,” Somers said. “But the last thing we want to be is unprepared for what people request of us.”

To that end, the duo already is looking to hire another employee to help handle Springfield business while one or both of the owners work in St. Louis.

But hiring creates its own set of challenges, namely in new costs for training, payroll, insurance and materials. That’s why Somers said he and Uebinger are both eager to finish the training to earn their pilot’s licenses.

“It’s less expensive for us to cover a broad area and travel from place to place than to staff multiple places with other employees,” Somers said.

“Even with owning an airplane, it will be several thousand dollars less a month than it would to staff those places. Besides, I didn’t start training two years ago to be a student pilot.”[[In-content Ad]]