Maine news, sports, weather | Kennebec Journal, Augusta, Maine

MAINE COMPASS: Maine & Company in the business of selling Maine

Peter DelGreco

Anthony Ronzio ends his recent column ("Dearth of a salesman," Sept. 8) with the question "Who sells Maine?"

Since 1996, Maine & Company has been doing just that, by selling Maine to site location consultants and private companies across the country. Results of our efforts can be seen in places such as Belfast with a campus for athenahealth, in Winthrop and Farmington where NotifyMD has operations, in Rockland at the Boston Financial Data Services building, and in Lewiston at Wal-Mart's distribution center.

Our latest success, Carbonite, opened its new technical support center in Lewiston earlier this summer with 75 employees. Carbonite has been so successful during its first three months in Lewiston that it is accelerating its Lewiston hiring and moving more work from India to Maine.

Maine & Company is a private, non-partisan, non-profit organization funded totally by the private sector. The key to our success is the commitment of our board of directors, which consists of senior executives from some of Maine's largest and most influential companies. Utilities, banks, law firms, marketing firms, technology companies all participate at the top levels of their organizations to help attract new companies to Maine.

This level of support and participation has allowed Maine & Company to transcend the political world and create a longstanding, stable organization that has earned an impeccable reputation with consultants and businesses who evaluate expansion opportunities across the country.

Ronzio overlooks an important fact about selling Maine and attracting new companies to our state: The sales process requires building longterm relationships and maintaining confidentiality.

Companies don't want their names in the news while they are having sensitive internal strategic discussions about their future plans. Public meetings with the governor of a state are important, but that often means the company will be in the news, often before they are ready to make a decision. Many projects across the country have been lost because of breaches in confidentiality.

Maine & Company's success has been based on strong relationships built over time. The athenahealth project, for example, took more than 3 years from beginning to end, more than 90 visits to Maine and more than 300 distinct meetings.

The result: an employer that purchased a 55-acre parcel with a 127,000-square-foot facility, hired 400 workers and is looking to add more.

Just last month, athenahealth made another investment in Maine, purchasing the Point Lookout facility in Northport. It already has increased the number of functions and events in this stunning facility, rescuing it from several years of financial turmoil.

As a private organization, we take a private sector, client-focused approach to our efforts. We work closely with our friends in state and local government, as well as our regional partners, but our goal is to demonstrate to growing and expanding companies how they can have a successful new venture in Maine.

While we sell Maine, state and local governments should continue to focus on Maine's business environment, making Maine an attractive location for business investment and job creation.

Coincidentally, on the date that Ronzio's column was published, I was meeting in Northport with 17 healthcare information technology companies from throughout the world and their investors. Some of these companies already are in a growth mode, but many are still in the research and development phase, where serious growth might be three or four years down the road.

The point is, we are building relationships with all of these parties, and, when they are ready to expand, they already know about Maine and that Maine & Company is there to help them grow in our state.

Our work may not get the attention of a high profile, state-sponsored trade mission, but we are selling Maine -- every day, all year long.

Peter DelGreco is president and CEO of Maine & Company, a private, non-profit corporation that provides free and confidential consulting services to businesses looking to relocate to Maine or expand within Maine. www.maineco.org