Published in Orlando Business Journal, July 2-8, 2010
By Richard Bilbao
Mark Moore, 33, is starting his own professional and technical staffing company — Kavaliro — and plans to fill up to 60 new positions at the newly
formed firm.
The Orlando-based company was formed June 28 after Moore and partners John Mahony, 37; Diane Symes-Mahony, 37; and Bill Peppler, 35; bought the Orlando and Charlotte, N.C., operations of SkillStorm Commercial Services LLC.
SkiliStorm is an 8-year-old, San Diego-based staffing services provider with 300 employees in 13 states.
The financial terms of the deal, which took six months to negotiate, were not disclosed.
Kavaliro plans to move to a new office in Orlando and take on 125 employees that worked in the Orlando and Charlotte offices, including employees based in other states, including California, New York and Texas. The company will provide staffing services to clients in several growing industries, including health care, high-tech/professional services and accounting/finance.
The decision to start Kavaliro - came about in part because of the June acquisition of San Diego-based SGIS — a federal government contracting firm and sister company to SkillStorm — by Salient Federal Solutions Inc., a Fairfax, Va.-based information technology and engineering solutions company.
Moore and his partners were managing officials for SGIS’ local operations before the acquisition. They used their proceeds from that deal to buy SkillStorm’s Orlando and Charlotte offices.
The creation of Kavaliro was the partners’ chance to take control, Moore said. “Quite frankly, we wanted to run our own show, be responsible for our own people and have the buck stop at us.”
Kavaliro will add another 60 people for consulting positions before the end of the year, said Moore. The average salary of such positions starts at $25,000, said Indeed.com, an online job database.
In addition, the firm hired First Capital Property Group to help it search for a new 6,000-square-foot office in Orlando for its headquarters.
Rebecca Amesbury, vice president of communications for SkillStorm, said Skillstorm will retain its five other offices, minus Orlando and Charlotte. “This allows us to focus more on the clients we have in San Diego, Tampa, Fort Lauderdale and the other SkillStorm markets,” she said. “We’re leaving Orlando and Charlotte on a positive note, and we think Kavaliro will do a great job servicing our prior clients there.”
The emergence of another staffing company in Orlando will create more competition for existing local firms, but that’s par for the course, said John Thompson, director of business operations for Hanover, Md.-based staffing firm Aerotek Inc.’s east Orlando office.
“The staffing industry historically is very competitive,” Thompson said, noting widespread hiring freezes and slowdowns due to the recession have affected all staffing companies. However, Thompson said as the economic recovery begins, increased manufacturing activity could translate into more jobs — and calls to staffing firms.
As for Moore, he’s ready to take on the challenge of getting the Kavaliro’s name out there. “We’ve done this business before and had been successful at
it, and now we are better positioned to do it again,” he added.