How a Detroit-Area Integrator Survived Recession
By Tom LeBlanc
Growth comes from Cash-for-Clunkers-like system upgrade program and assembly line-like approach to system building.

Google "Detroit" and you'll find some depressing stuff - foreclosures, houses going for $10,000, 15 percent unemployment, auto industry decline, umpire Jim Joyce.

It's not pretty.

You won't find many stories about thriving small businesses with anticipated 2010 growth of 25 percent. That, however, is the situation at Spire Integrated Systems. Despite its Troy, Mich. location 20 miles north of Detroit, local construction grinding to a virtual halt and a client market reluctant to spend for fear of losing their jobs, the company has grown over the past three years from five to nine employees and its 25 percent revenue growth this year comes on the heels of 12 percent growth in 2009.



Things aren't all bad in the Detroit area and that doesn't just go for Spire Integrated Systems, says principal Navot Shoresh. As a proud Michigander, he doesn't always appreciate the media's sometimes-indulgent portrayal of a collapsed region. That's not to say that he's in denial.

"The Detroit area has been hit hard by the recession," Shoresh says. "However, many companies and individuals have long realized that the auto industry is no longer going to sustain their growth or livelihood and so they evolved. Many of our clients are in the biomedical field, military and aerospace, banking, software and so on."

Thriving auto industry or not, manufacturing and an appreciation for methodical hard work are in the blood of Detroit-area folks, says Spire general manager Jason Bellanti. Spire, meanwhile, takes an assembly line-like approach to system building, which he says plays well with the client base.

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