Reports And Articles

by: Stan Bullard, Senior Reporter

 

Clear Choice Photo Booth, which provides camera kiosks and setups for people to take digital photos of themselves at events, has traded its location in a Westlake office/warehouse building for a 1900-vintage warehouse on a side street in Cleveland's Ohio City neighborhood.

 

David Hobrath, who owns Clear Choice Photo but takes the title of national sales manager, said the 8-year-old company needed more space to grow but also sought a more central location to attract talent in the future. When a staffer found the two-building complex with about 15,000 square feet of space on the Loopnet real estate listing site, it just clicked for the company.

"We were packed in like sardines," Hobrath said of the company's nine employees, including himself, who had been squeezed into a 3,000- square-foot office-warehouse space. "Now, our office is larger than our warehouse used to be."

 

Its new office space is on the second floor of a warehouse at 2067 W. 41st St., nestled in the corner of a residential area but backing up to the Lorain Avenue commercial district. Originally, the brick building served as a fruit-packing house for a surrounding area that preceded many of the surrounding houses and the city's zoning code.

 

Transforming the brick and timber buildings that had served for years as workshops and warehouses to creative office space just took stripping out carpet and drop ceilings, Hobrath said. With staffers coming from homes in areas ranging from Euclid and Brecksville, it's already more convenient, he said, "and with much better food nearby."

 

The new offices will allow Clear Choice to meet personally with clients more often and to develop a studio with locations that display various photo backdrops it can supply with kiosks the company rents that accommodate iPads or digital SLR cameras. Besides renting the outfits, Hobrath says the company also sells the kiosks to others.

 

Clear Choice started as a sideline for Hobrath and his wife, but it grew so fast the former cellphone salesman and phone shop owner made it a full-time gig. His first locations came from out-of-state relatives who wanted to get into the business, but they later dropped out because of the time commitments during evenings and weekends — prime time for everything from graduation parties to business celebrations.

 

Now, the company serves customers for social events in 20 states with a total of 60 contractors, including 30 in Ohio. He said it will serve business clients nationally. Most of the growth the past few years has been in providing photo booths for businesses. Hobrath wouldn't identify business clients, but familiar names abound in photo backdrops on the firm's website.

 

"I will say we have been blessed with businesses to work with," Hobrath said. He estimates there are a half-dozen photobooth suppliers in Northeast Ohio. Records at the Ohio Secretary of State's office show more than 40 companies statewide have been formed with the phrase in their names.

 

Hobrath said gross sales in 2019 were $1.6 million, up from $1.2 million in 2018. He also has plans to push out in new directions, envisioning the empty top floor of the taller building as an office for software developers as he has bought photobooth software technology he plans to expand. The software provides doodles or drawings on the photos that clients may have printed or post on social networking sites.

 

Patrick Dowd, a senior vice president for Sequoia Realty of Mentor who handled the lease with Clear Choice for the warehouse's owners, Garfield Heights-based Harsax Inc., said multiple companies were interested in the space. He added he was not surprised the novel business location was occupied five months after the commercial real estate firm bought the property, thanks to the development and business action in Ohio City.

 

Randy Sacks, a senior vice president at family-owned Harsax, said Clear Choice "filled the bill for what we were looking for: a growing company that liked Ohio City." He said he was not surprised the space was taken by a younger company owner in a media-related field.

 

Cleveland City Councilman Kerry McCormack, whose Ward 3 includes the site, said he hadn't heard of Clear Choice moving to the neighborhood, but said he considers it "pleasant news, but not a surprise."