SkySpecs adds Amsterdam office, doubles Ann Arbor staff

This piece is part of a series highlighting local business growth in the Ann Arbor area. It is supported by Ann Arbor SPARK.

Less than three months after moving headquarters to a larger office to accommodate its expanding Ann Arbor team, SkySpecs has also opened a new office in Amsterdam to serve its European clients.

Theresa Trevor, director of marketing for the company that uses automated drones to inspect wind turbines, says both expansions were made possible through an $8 million round of financing in late 2017.

"We have a high concentration of customers in Europe, and it's a good time for us begin to have a presence over there," Trevor says. "It's a very central location, because we have customers in Germany and the U.K. And Amsterdam is a direct flight, which doesn't hurt."

Currently the office, which opened for business in mid-August, only has one full-time employee, Franz LaZerte, who serves as sales and account manager for Europe. However, Trevor says the Amsterdam office will be hiring and filling out its team for the rest of 2018.

This news comes just a few months after Skyspecs moved from an office on Fourth Avenue to new offices at 213 W. Liberty, allowing the company to double its staff to 34 total employees. Trevor says that's just the number of employees in the Ann Arbor office, not including employees and contractors based outside of Ann Arbor who pilot the drones.

In another big milestone, SkySpecs just hit the 10,000 mark for inspections completed both onshore and offshore since it began drone inspections in mid-2016.

Trevor also notes that the company earlier this year released Horizon, a new management and analytics platform that customers can use to analyze the data the drones collect.

"We now have software to allow customers to make sense of the data we gather for them," Trevor says.

Sarah Rigg is a freelance writer and editor in Ypsilanti Township. You may reach her at sarahrigg1@gmail.com.

Photo courtesy of SkySpecs.