By: Deborah Johnson Wood
Back before having an address at 15 Ionia SW was cool, one Grand Rapids technology consulting firm acted on the gut feeling that the city would soon embrace the area, and they moved in. Now that company, C/D/H, is celebrating its 17th anniversary with a year of unprecedented growth and the opening of a branch office in Royal Oak MI, just north of Detroit.
"When we moved here, we literally had to step over people sleeping in our doorway," says president Paul Hillman. "We had a hard time hiring women, they didn't want to work down here. Now we look like geniuses because we moved down here so early in the city's transformation."
In a knowledge economy, C/D/H is uniquely positioned for growth because its only product is knowledge—specialized technology consulting for companies embarking on a large technology initiative.
In 2007, the firm added five positions to the Royal Oak and Grand Rapids offices, bringing the employee count to 25. The vision is to have 60 employees on board by 2012.
In 2008, C/D/H plans to add four Grand Rapids jobs and four Royal Oak jobs, bringing aboard specialists experienced in both technology and business. The positions will pay nearly six figures each.
"We've formed a broader board of directors chaired by one of our partners, Keith Dierking, to position us in the market and to provide greater high-level transition to hit the metrics we've laid out for ourselves," Hillman says. "We have stepped back and deemed that, in what is typically a down economy, the sectors we're in are not down at all. There's a big market out there."
Source: Paul Hillman, C/D/H; Randy Boileau, Boileau Communications Management, LLC
Deborah Johnson Wood is the development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].
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