The company's current US office is in Buffalo, NY. "Denver is a hell of a nice place to go to," Bacon tells GlobeSt.com. "The former headquarters was in Iceland: only the US office was in Buffalo," Bacon tells GlobeSt.com. "This is really a move of the headquarters from Iceland to Denver and an integration of the Buffalo office into the new headquarters."
Medcare develops, manufactures and sells sleep diagnostic equipment. "It allows physicians and hospitals to diagnose sleep disorders," Bacon says. He says the entire business is growing an average of 15% per year. "It's hard to say how much more office space we would need in the future," he tells GlobeSt.com. "But I would say I would like to be able to double the size of our office within the next five years." He will begin moving into the new office at the end of February.
Bacon says they considered about a half dozen to a dozen cities before landing in Denver. "We liked that Denver had low-cost airlines and a new, great airport at Denver International Airport." He says he made the decision to move here before Southwest Airlines recently announced it would start flying from DIA in January. "To be honest, Frontier was the carrier we were thinking about," he tells GlobeSt.com. Also, Denver's central location allows it easy access to its clients.
"Also, Denver is an easy place to recruit people," Bacon tells GlobeSt.com. On the other hand, he says, not that many people wanted to relocate to Buffalo.
"But I found that a lot of people who live in Buffalo have very strong family ties there and don't want to leave," he tells GlobeSt.com. Still, a few people are relocating from Buffalo to the Denver area. The median price of a homes in Denver is about $250,000, compared with $103,700 in Buffalo.
"They are suffering sticker shock when they look at the price of homes in Denver," Bacon tells GlobeSt.com. "But they're finding that their property taxes are probably half as much in Colorado than in Buffalo, because New York is a very high-tax state. And I think their overall cost of living for things like groceries is less in Denver than in Buffalo."
Tom Clark, executive vice president of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp., says that he always welcomes a new world headquarters to the metro area. He notes it is rare for Denver to get a company from the East Coast, much less Iceland.
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