Techead
(Small Business Success Story of the Year - Central Virginia Finalist)
Flood waters failed to sink IT staffing firm

by Donna C. Gregory
for Virginia Business
February 2006

Richmond IT staffing firm Techead has weathered its share of challenges — the dot-com bust, Y2K, 9/11 and even Mother Nature. “We have really built a business through blood, sweat and tears, through sales and service,” says Philise Conein, the company’s CEO. “We’ve managed to just kind of ride the waves.”

“Riding the waves” took on a whole new meaning in August 2004, when soaking rains from Tropical Storm Gaston flooded the company’s headquarters in Richmond’s Shockoe Bottom district. “We lost our entire first and lower levels of our building, including our training rooms, off-the-shelf software, network capabilities, electrical systems, furniture and all desktop equipment for staff,” she recalls.

The ensuing eight months were “complete torture,” says Phil Conein, Philise’s husband, and Techead’s founder and president. “Just imagine scraping six inches of sludge off the floors…off any kind of flat surface. It was very, very difficult.”

Even so, Techead never went off-line. In fact, many of its clients didn’t even know of the company’s trouble. Within 24 hours of the storm’s passing, Techead set up temporary offices in downtown Rich-mond, and two months later it moved back to its Shockoe Bottom address. The staff worked upstairs while renovations were under way. “We did not miss a client call or a payroll during this entire process,” notes Phil.

With far fewer challenges, many companies in the field of staffing, training and Web solutions have folded in recent years due to changes in the IT environment. Techead, however, has proved that a small, local company can outlast even large competitors, particularly when it adapts to customer needs.

Phil founded the company in 1988 in a one-bedroom apartment in Richmond’s Fan district. Philise joined him in the business a week later. They married in 1990.

In the beginning, the Coneins provided desktop publishing support to local businesses and corporations. Soon clients were calling them to troubleshoot other IT issues. “A client suggested that they would like to hire someone like myself with those skill sets. I could see [that an IT staffing agency would] work. Just because of my exposure to technology, I knew there would be a transition into this kind of work,” Phil says.

In 1992, Techead expanded to include a staffing service, and two years later it added a training component. Since then, the company has placed more than 1,200 creative and IT professionals in contract positions with local companies. The client roster includes Philip Morris, Circuit City and Wachovia Securities.

Wachovia Securities — formerly Wheat, First Securities — has been a client since Techead started its IT staffing arm. “[The company] has helped us be able to manage our volumes and direct our growth without all the costs of employees. We really do get great people at all levels of experience,” says David Acey, managing director of marketing at the securities firm.

So great, in fact, that most members of Wachovia Securities’ graphic design team are former Techead contractors. “The employees were so good that as we created opportunities for full-time positions. We would work it out with Phil to hire these associates,” says Acey.

Success didn’t come easy for Techead, however. There were lean years, particularly after Y2K, 9/11 and the dot-com bust. “We were in the creative business, and there were no marketing dollars to be spent,” says Phil. “We had to come up with a lot of creative ways to keep employees.”

To ensure the company’s survival, the Coneins temporarily cut their employees’ work week to 32 hours, refinanced the business and closed their Northern Virginia office in 2003. “We lost revenues, but we stayed on course,” says Phil.

In 2004, the company saw a 50 percent increase in revenue, and in 2005, “we had the best year ever in our history,” says Phil. The company now employs 12 full-time staff and around 50 full-time contractors.

Last August, Techead spun off a new company, TULIP Solutions LLC, to market a newly developed Web-based time logging system that allows companies to track employee hours electronically. “We decided to separate our product from ourselves, and we launched it as a separate company,” says Phil. “We’re getting a lot of interest and we’re really excited by the opportunities for it.”

In the future, the Coneins expect steady growth. “We’re looking to expand into Maryland and down into North Carolina. We’ll be back in Northern Virginia very soon,” says Phil. “We’re going to be around. We’re not going away.”