It was a cold day in February, 1985, when Warren Offenberger and I launched Offenberger and White, Inc. with a borrowed typewriter, a piano bench for a desk, some felt markers and rubber cement, guts and optimism. Ten minutes after our first phone was installed, someone called and asked for OffWhite. It’s been that way ever since – a great ride and getting better. OffWhite has the best combination of talent, brains, energy and commitment that I’ve seen in our 27 years in business. We’re renewed each morning by our own ideas, challenges from our clients and opportunities enabled by our investment in technology.
Everything we do at OffWhite has a job number. Our stock in trade is based on time and materials and our lives, as TS Eliot understated, are measured out in coffee spoons. We call these time sheets. OffWhite reached a milestone this week, nearly 27 years in the making, when Jodie opened project number 10,000, a job to prepare and present a proposal based on discussions with a new client here last Friday. As always, it’s a technology-based project, ideal for who we are and what we do, rich in detail and waiting to be explained, articulated and sold to the market. Thanks to everyone at OffWhite for continued and enthusiastic efforts to build our firm into one of the easiest companies to do business with, one of Southeastern Ohio’s most valuable business resources and one of America’s most innovative idea engines for life science and technology marketing.
Together we are setting new standards internally and for our clients around the world. With ideas like these we can expect an ambitious journey to project number 20,000. So, what was job number one? For the record, February 1985, OW00001 was opened for the Walker Technical Users’ Catalog. Walker, long since absorbed into the Wiremold family of power, lighting, electronics and communications component manufacturers, exemplified a client relationship that continues to be a model for partnering with people who know what they’re doing and care about the outcomes.
Today, OffWhite remains rooted in the values, processes and commitment to clients that we brought in the door that cold day 27 years ago. We owe many people for our success. Onward.
