Evolution of an Enterprise, Chapter 21: A Year in the Books

The owners of Springfield-based Voyager Industries LLC have much for which to be thankful for as 2008 comes to a close.

Josh Somers and Binh Uebinger have expanded their aircraft detailing business from a two-man operation, cleaning the occasional private plane from Springfield-Branson National Airport's general aviation facility, to a company with four employees working in three markets with plans to expand across state lines.

"The fact that we're sitting here having this interview and not talking about what caused us to go out of business - in an election year, where we're in a horrible economic situation and fewer planes are flying - is amazing," Somers said in his and Uebinger's last interview for Springfield Business Journal's Evolution of an Enterprise series.

A roller-coaster ride

Despite the optimism, the company fell well short of its 2008 sales projection of $100,000.

Among the goals for the coming year is leveling out the weekly workload and revenues.

"In the beginning, we worked toward having a good day, and we've had good days," Somers said. "Now we're working toward good months or a good quarter. I think by the end of 2009, we'll be working toward our first good year. That's when we'll feel like we're not fighting motion sickness - we won't have jobs in Kansas City and Tulsa and (only) enough gas to get halfway to one of them."

2008 served as a year to lay the groundwork for future growth. The company added employees Josh Hicks and Kellen Locke in September, mainly to handle the additional demand of work in St. Louis.

Now, Uebinger and Somers have turned their sights to the south and west.

They have a tentative agreement with Branson Airport to clean the facility's general aviation traffic when the airport opens in May, and the two are in negotiations with fractional aircraft ownership company NetJets to offer services in Oklahoma City and Tulsa.

Uebinger said the decision to spread beyond Springfield was crucial to the company's survival - and it was a decision he wished he and Somers had made earlier.

"Our first six months we stayed here, and that put us about six months behind," Uebinger said, noting that building a group of regular clients takes a large geographic coverage area. "That's why so many of the bigger companies that have been around for years have 10 or 20 locations. It's not that they're at all of those locations every day. They just spread themselves out to cover that area."

Lessons learned

If there's anything Somers and Uebinger have learned from a year as business owners, it's that they were perhaps too optimistic about the speed with which their business would take off.

"Everyone seemed to know that it would take longer than Binh and I expected - everyone in our network who had started their own business thought it would take longer," Somers said. "Looking back, I would have been (better) prepared for that, knowing that every success isn't necessarily followed by another."

Somers said they also underestimated the amount of seed money the company would need - much of which came from entrepreneur Rick Williams, who ultimately invested $60,000 in exchange for equal ownership.

"We had so much potential and so many things potentially going on, but we had to survive the first few months while we solidified that work," Somers said.

Uebinger added that he wishes the two had been more prepared for the up-and-down nature of a new business, as well as the inevitable failures.

One example he pointed to is OzAir, the Springfield charter company Voyager had banked on contracting with earlier this year. Negotiations eventually fell through, but the inability to get a contract led to other opportunities.

"There are things I would have liked to do differently, but then we wouldn't have ended up with the contacts that we have," he said. "We wouldn't have ended up going to St. Louis if we would have landed OzAir."

The coming year is targeted for growth. Somers said he thinks the five markets Voyager will be working in - Springfield/Branson, St. Louis, Kansas City, Tulsa and Oklahoma City - could each generate $10,000 in monthly business. That would be a far cry from the lean times the two budding business owners faced at certain points in 2008.

"We made it work - but it took a lot of tuna fish and ramen noodles," Somers said.

"And bean burritos from Taco Bell," Uebinger added.