Dane Technologies rounds up carts of all kinds

Dick Youngblood, Star Tribune
Published April 27, 2003

Daniel Johnson made a slight miscalculation in 1996 when he resigned as senior vice president of public finance at Dain Bosworth to start a business that has changed the way shopping carts are collected in parking lots around the world.

" I thought I could spend more time with my family," said Johnson, whose 12-to 14-hour days quickly scuttled that notion. "It was what you might call a tactical error, although I did do a lot less traveling."

There haven't been many mistakes since then, it would appear.

Johnson, 47, is founder and CEO of Dane Technologies Inc., the Plymouth company that makes those QuicKart power units we see muscling shopping carts around parking lots at Cub Foods, Target and dozens of other retailing clients.

Thanks to product additions and a widening marketing net, Dane also has found a cartful of non-retail clients, including hospitals, nursing homes and factories.

The result is a business that grossed $5.6 million last year and is on track to reach about $7.2 million this year.

All of which accounts for only part of Johnson's entrepreneurial saga. In an effort to assemble data on maintenance costs of the machines it sold, Dane developed software to track multiple pieces of equipment serviced by a large number of contractors at many locations around the country.

It turned out to be just what Dane's clients needed to manage their own equipment-maintenance programs. In 2000, Johnson started Verisae Inc. to market the software and spun it off as a dividend to Dane shareholders.

The upshot: Verisae sales reached $850,000 in 2002, and new business already signed or pending promises revenue of more than $3 million this year. Clients include Emerson Electric and Safeway U.K.

Divine intervention?

Despite his urge to own his own business, Johnson didn't find the QuicKart opportunity -- it found him.

He'd invested in a home-remodeling business, and one day a woman who represented the QuicKart inventor stopped by and started asking questions about who the investors were.

The remodeler gave her Johnson's name and telephone number, and before you could say, "Where's my checkbook?" he was watching a video showing the QuicKart in action.

" I call it divine intervention," Johnson said. "I was ready to get into my own business, and here was a product that would cut labor costs and reduce workplace injuries significantly."

So he bought the rights to the QuicKart and said goodby to a regular income for 18 months, a period during which he cashed in savings and investments approaching seven figures to launch the business. Since then, he's raised $2.7 million from a dozen private investors, including $800,000 in 2000 to develop Verisae.

To Dick McFarland, former chairman of RBC Dain Rauscher (née Dain Bosworth), his Dane investment was a no-brainer: "Dan was one of our superstars -- very bright, very experienced," McFarland said. "And if you look at a Cub or Target parking lot with all those carts, you know he's fulfilling a real need."

Another investor -- David Koch, former CEO of Graco Inc. -- shares that assessment: "I was impressed with [Johnson] and I'm impressed with his product," Koch said.

New markets found

Johnson acknowledged, however, that his strategic thinking wasn't very well-honed at first: "I didn't stop to think that grocers and mass merchants weren't the only market for the QuicKart."

That notion was planted firmly in 1998, when United Hospital called in search of an easier way to haul the heavy carts that carry surgical instruments from sterilization stations to operating rooms.

That led to development of the PowerPal 1000 line, smaller units that resemble an oversized vacuum cleaner and pull a load instead of pushing it.

The PowerPal now is used in 30 hospitals, including United and Mercy in the Twin Cities. Whereupon nursing homes as well as hospitals began calling for machines to haul meal and laundry carts.

" I've sort of followed the bread crumbs that our clients have laid down for us since then," Johnson said. "They tell us what they need."

In recent years, for example, the crumbs led to Pfizer and other pharmaceutical companies, which use the PowerPal to move heavy "batching tanks" through the production process. Then came IBM, Alliant and other high-tech giants that use it to move electronic parts in the manufacturing process.

Later, larger versions were made for Walt Disney World to move concession carts, for HMS Host to trundle food and beverage carts around major airports and for Boeing to supply parts to production lines. And now Dane is developing units designed for the dairy-processing industry, as well as power-assist tools to move hospital beds.

Where will the crumbs lead next? Johnson isn't sure, except that "there are a lot of heavy loads that have to be wheeled around out there. And with an aging workforce and growing concern about safety and productivity, the opportunities are virtually endless."

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