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Dayton's focus should be building local firms, says Stratacache CEO

Staff photo by Jim Noelker Stratacache CEO Chris Riegel on the top of his company's new building at 2 Riverplace.

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Louie Hollmeyer, vice president of marketing for Stratacache, demonstrates software that can determine a person’s gender, ethnicity and age.

Staff photo by Jim Noelker Louie Hollmeyer, vice president of marketing for Stratacache, demonstrates software that can determine a person’s gender, ethnicity and age.

Small entrepreneurial companies offer good prospect for growth.

By Thomas Gnau, Staff Writer Updated 1:47 AM Wednesday, July 22, 2009

DAYTON — A local chief executive thinks the Dayton area would do well to focus not on “poaching” companies from other areas, but on growing promising firms already here.

Chris Riegel, chief executive of digital signage specialist Stratacache, thinks his company may be an example of what he calls “organic” growth. He recently turned down overtures from Dallas, and is moving from his former East Third Street offices to a new home at 2 Riverplace just north of the Great Miami River.

“There needs to be more cultivation of local business, as opposed to catering to big corporations,” said Riegel, an Alter High School graduate.

The aim for development should be “organic growth,” he said. “Dallas can poach,” Riegel said. “But Dayton has to grow internally.”

Stratacache has two full floors and parts of two other floors at 2 Riverplace — a total of some 45,000 square feet. The company closed on 85 percent of the building in February, becoming the dominant owner there. Workers started renovating in March and began moving in this spring. Work on offices within continues.

The company focuses on digital signs for retail outlets and its Omnicast digital media division, a tool that digitally distributes films and more.

“We made the call to stay in Ohio based on the facility, based on proximity to our customer markets,” Riegel said. Stratacache serves banking, retail and hospitality markets, and he calls Ohio “very centrally located” to those customers. For example, Riegel planned an afternoon flight Tuesday, July 21, to New York. He expected a relatively brief, 90-minute trip. That wouldn’t be possible from Texas, he said.

Jim Hill, business incubation manager of The Entrepreneurs Center, on Monument Avenue across from the Tech Town development, agrees that small local businesses are where jobs are created. Hill points to findings by the Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City, which found that “a third of gross domestic product is created by companies that didn’t even exist 20 years ago.”

“Without those entrepreneurial companies, job growth would be zero in this country,” Hill said.