Aires is an interesting company. When Smart Business last spoke with CEO Bryan Putt for a cover story, it was 2012. The corporate relocation company had not only made it through the recession, it found new ways to grow despite a shrinking market. Five years later, it’s a different story.
Putt says the uptick in the economy over the past 18 months has been very beneficial for the downstream service provider.
“When business is good for the major industrials and the different sectors, they need their people moved,” he says. “We see the mobility programs grow in terms of volume as well as in terms of some of the benefits that are offered in it.”
The company’s market also has shifted. Today, the domestic business outstrips the international.
While most companies start in the U.S. before heading overseas, Aires was the opposite. The international aspect tends to have more moving parts, so as the business grew, it took that level of expertise and stepped into the domestic side that is typically less complex to manage.
But all that growth, whether here or overseas, has been organic.
“We are heavily biased in our thinking toward organic growth. We tend to feel that that is the healthiest way to move forward,” Putt says.
While there has been a continuing trend of consolidation, Aires believes two merged organizations have a either a neutral or negative affect on customers.
“It tends to be a forced environment where you’ve got two organizations that are merging for market reasons that aren’t always positive — and very rarely is it driven by the customer and creating a better solution for the clients,” he says. “They tell you that’s what it’s for, but we tend to see organizations merge and there’s a lot of fallout from that. We haven’t seen a better mousetrap being built that way.”
While those organizations might tell you a different story, Aires hasn’t seen a reason to change its strategy yet.
“We’re about controlled growth. We don’t want to have our business outstrip our services ability, and we target 15 percent annual growth, which basically doubles us every five years. At that rate we can ensure the quality of service that we’re delivering, and that’s paramount to what we do,” Putt says.
