Monsen Engineering Locations
By Ed Avis
Surveying equipment and supplies is a business category for many APDSP members, but the firm of the newest APDSP board member takes that involvement to a new level. Mikel Monsen, who was elected to the board in August, is the director of print and scan solutions for Monsen Engineering in Salt Lake City, UT, which is a major surveying supplies and equipment dealer in that state.
“The survey side of our business is by and large the larger chunk of our business,” Monsen says. “But the print side is another good chunk. We've tried to really make that a marriage between the two departments because most of the time if they're doing some kind of a survey or collecting of data there's usually a good chance they're going to print it out as well.”
Early Years
Mikel Monsen
Mikel Monsen, Monsen Engineering
The company was founded in 1974 by Monsen’s great uncle, Roger Monsen. He had been a salesman for a company that sold K&E drafting supplies when that company decided to stop selling to a certain group of customers. Roger had many customers who bought these supplies, so he asked if he could continue selling the line. They said no, so he struck out on his own.
“He went to K&E and said, ‘Can I continue selling this product?’” Mikel Monsen says. “They said, ‘If you’re willing to buy X amount of dollars’ worth of inventory, we’ll set you up.’” It was a lot of money for those days, so Roger and his brother Kent pooled their money to make the first purchase.
Mikel’s father, Paul Monsen (Kent’s son), had just graduated from college at that time, and joined his uncle at the fledgling business. A short time later, Roger’s son Richard joined the company. The company added surveying equipment and supplies over time, and eventually blueprinting equipment. When Roger retired, Richard took over as CEO and Paul as CFO.
Mikel’s earliest memory of the business involved a massive snowstorm.
“That year we had massive snow fall and an overnight heat wave in the early spring. And at that time our drainage systems were massively underdeveloped as far as the size to handle the water volume from the melting snow,” Monsen says. “Our old office was right in the middle of downtown and there was about four feet of water flowing past our front door because of runoff. I remember asking my dad if he would let me go sandbag, which of course, a five-year-old sandbagging with that kind of water would be absolutely crazy, but I was crushed that I couldn't go down and help save the office. It's amazing I can remember anything at that age but that was really impactful because I've just known I've always wanted to be a part of it in some way.”
It was over a decade later before Monsen really got his chance to join the business. While he was in high school and college, he worked summers at the company, including one summer when he became intimately familiar with that beloved reprographic material, mylar.
“I worked that summer archiving all of the mylars from a mine site in Wyoming,” he remembers. “These had all been stored underground for, I don't know how many decades, and they had gone real purple and just that funky color they can get over a long period of time. I spent months trying to get those documents cleaned up and making sure they're readable.”
In 2005, after graduating with a degree in public relations and business, he formally joined the company. He ran the warehouse for about a year, then spent three years in accounts receivable. Next he went into sales for the company, including hardware, media, ink, and drafting furniture. He has held his current position since 2013.
“We used to sell a lot of drafting tables and drafting height chairs and things like that, parallel ruler bars,” he says. “I moved a lot of those. Even as late as 2007, we had sold a lot of that stuff. It just goes to show how fast things change.”
Surveying Changes
The changes in the drafting and reprographics worlds pale in comparison to those in surveying, Monsen notes. For example, the advent of GPS data transformed the industry. Monsen Engineering played a role in the litigation that freed satellite data from solely military use.
“Back then, the only access was for the military,” Monsen says, adding that civilian use of the data became available sometime in the late 1990s, after successful litigation. “And in the early days you could connect with one or two or maybe three satellites. Nowadays you may have 20 different satellites from 10 different countries that you can link to from Russia to China to the U.S. It allows you to pinpoint your accuracy so much better. Where it may have been meters in accuracy before, now you're subcentimeter accuracy.”
That improved accuracy has led to some interesting surprises, Monsen says.
“We've gone back to a lot of places that have been surveyed and you find how incredibly far off they were. A good example is The Four Corners down in Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. That monument has been changed, that I'm aware of, at least four or five times, where the actual state lines are, because of improved surveying. Folks who thought they were putting a hand and a foot in every state were not actually in all four states in days past,” Monsen laughs.
Monsen sells surveying equipment and supplies to a wide range of customers, including those working in construction, mapping, and geographic information systems (GIS). They also provide equipment to many local governments.
“A lot of the cities have a GIS specialist who goes out and finds all the fire hydrants in the city and they'll go in and collect that data for emergency response or maintenance use,” he says. “We sell them the hardware to go out and collect the information and then hopefully we sell them the printer to go with it in case they need to print something out and review it.”
Selling the Company
Monsen’s journey with the company took a surprising turn in the spring of 2017. Another survey supply company offered to buy Monsen Engineering, but only the survey side, not the reprographics side. Mikel decided it might be time to strike out on his own.
“So at the end of 2017 I was working on trying to buy all of the inventory that we had on hand and then open up my own little print side of the business, which would've allowed me to keep all my existing customer base,” he says.
Then, just as suddenly, another local company expressed interest in the entire Monsen Engineering. This suitor, Wheeler Machinery, is a Caterpillar dealer, and they wanted to expand horizontally, so buying Monsen as a whole made sense.
“They wanted the print division to stay on,” Monsen explains. “They felt like it was certainly worth keeping and it was profitable.”
Mikel’s father and cousin Richard, the company owners, accepted Wheeler’s offer, and the deal concluded in February 2018. The new owners are a $500 million company, so they have brought some purchasing leverage to the table.
“It's been really nice to have these guys as our owners,” Mikel says. “They're coming from Caterpillar equipment, where margins are very tight because you're talking million dollar equipment. So when they come across reprographics and see margins there, they're very excited to invest and help that business grow.”
Hopes for APDSP
Monsen says one area of APDSP he hopes to help expand are the networking opportunities. In a recent board meeting he suggested the idea of virtual “round tables” where members can interact with each other online, all at the same time, just as they would around a conference table.
“I think it's super important to have the connections among members,” he says. “We can all share concepts and ideas and help each other's business grow without stepping on each other’s toes. It's a win-win in every way, shape and form.”
Editor’s Note: If you’re in Dallas, you can learn more about the virtual round-table idea on Saturday morning during the educational session of the APDSP Convention. It will be in Salon E of the Doubletree Hotel – Market Center. Click here for more information about the convention.