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Sweet marketing music

Tanner Montague came to town from Seattle having never owned his own music venue before. He’s a musician himself, so he has a pretty good sense of good music, but he also wandered into a crowded music scene filled with concert venues large and small.But the owner of Green Room thinks he found a void in the market. It’s lacking, he says, in places serving between 200 and 500 people, a sweet spot he thinks could be a draw for both some national acts not quite big enough yet for arena gigs and local acts looking for a launching pad.“I felt that size would do well in the city to offer more options,” he says. “My goal was to A, bring another option for national acts but then, B, have a great spot for local bands to start.”Right or wrong, something seems to be working, he says. He’s got a full calendar of concerts booked out several months. How did he, as a newcomer to the market in an industry filled with competition, get the attention of the local concertgoer?

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by Andrew Tellijohn
March 2007

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Global business


ThermoDynamo owner
maintains ties to ‘old
country’ by outsourcing

The owner of ThermoDynamo Productions in Plymouth is reaching out to his distant relatives while creating 24/7 capability for Web development work.

Alex Levin, owner, was born in Minsk, Belarus, and came to Minnesota in 1979 at age 4. He uses six to nine independent contractors in Minnesota to complete projects, but in recent months has also opened a job shop in Kharkov, Ukraine.

“We have a shop of relatives, a husband-and-wife team, that manage subcontractors that can help us with Web products," Levin says.

They use a combination of revenue sharing and hourly contracting, and it helps for round-the-clock coverage. “It’s quite a fabulous thing. While we sleep, they work and while they sleep, we work.”

The arrangement hasn’t brought in additional revenue, because Levin still generates the work out of the U.S. He says the profit margin on those jobs is slightly larger but probably not as large as if he outsourced to Sri Lanka.

He’s made the arrangement for a different reason: “I still work with some folks in the old country. It helps me stay connected to relatives.” How close are those relatives? “I like to say everybody’s my cousin,” he says with a laugh.

Levin learned Russian as a child, spoke it at home with his parents, and went through the Russian program at a local high school. He also worked in Russia for a time.

He says he’d like to open a job shop in Belarus, but conditions there don’t allow it. Levin cited President Bush’s State of the Union address Jan. 23, in which Bush singled out Belarus “as one of the last dictatorships in Eastern Europe. It’s painful to know I have relatives there,” Levin says.

Levin thinks his effort is a tiny step toward helping Eastern Europeans gain their share of the Web development market.  “The talent in Eastern Europe is mind-boggling. The skill set surpasses that of India. They can’t penetrate the American market because they lack English.”

His parents came here through a Jewish refugee program, and helped to bring others over. He’s sold ads for radio, TV and the Web, and started his Web development firm because he enjoys producing a tangible product.

“Both my parents are production people, in math and science. I liked that they could attach a patent to a thing they made,” he says.

Alex Levin, ThermoDynamo Productions: 612.250.2828; alex@thermodynamo.com; www.thermodynamo.com