Adding to the Archives: Document Storage Company Acquires New York Firm

Republican-American
Saturday, April 22, 2000
By Joe Coombs

WATERTOWN - A local records management firm announced Friday it has made its second acquisition in less than three months.

ArchivesOne - which is headquartered on Commercial Street and has a division on Brown Place in Waterbury - bought Document Storage & Management, a similar firm in Port Washington, N.Y. with 200 customers and 45,000 square feet of storage space. Terms were not disclosed.

ArchivesOne provides records management and storage services to law firms, insurance agencies, hospitals and other businesses. The company, founded in 1991 by A.J. Wasserstein, now has more than 1,000 customers and 60 employees and plans to grow even more in the near future.

"We're actively pursuing logical and rational acquisitions," said Wasserstein, the company's president and director of customer happiness. "We have a bunch of potential acquisitions that are in various stages of dialogue right now. There will be more, it's only a question of when."

In February, ArchivesOne bought New Jersey-based Clover Records Management, a records management company with 15 employees and 200,000 square feet of storage space. The move represented a 70 percent increase in revenue for ArchivesOne, which before these two purchases handled about $2.6 million in sales.

With the two acquisitions, Wasserstein's firm has doubled its business in a few short months. All employees at Document Storage & Management will be retained, as with the Clover transaction.

"We are getting some wonderful team members in this deal," said John Pavlovich, ArchivesOne's chief financial officer. "We really see this as an opportunity to leverage off a great group of people and grow significantly in an additional geographic market."

Waterbury-based American Bank of Connecticut provided debt financing for the Document Storage purchase, and Housatonic Partners, a venture capital firm in Boston, supplied equity financing.

"American Bank deserves a lot of credit," Wasserstein said. "That's Waterbury money that is helping to support growth outside of our region. We're very pleased with our arrangement with Housatonic Partners, as well."

ArchivesOne moved last year into its new Watertown headquarters after spending the previous eight years in Waterbury, where it still maintains an old warehouse for storage. A 50,000-square-foot warehouse is located next to its new offices in Watertown.