By MATT CHANDLER
mchandler@bizjournals.com | 716-541-1654

With all the doom and gloom about high unemployment, industries besieged with layoffs and companies of all sizes implementing hiring freezes, you might think it would be a bad time to be in the staffing business.

Not if you're Mikey Martin.

She owns Globalquest Staffing Solutions Inc. in Williamsville, and business is booming.

Key players: Martha "Mikey" Martin and Christine Lorenz, who has been with Martin since 1996 and is director of sales. They oversee a full-time staff of 15. When the company began in 1994, Martin's husband, former Buffalo Sabre great Rick Martin, was the first salesman. He remained active in the business until his death earlier this year.

History: Globalquest Staffing was founded by Mikey in 1994. She subsequently opened a second support business, Globalquest Solutions, in 2000.

Inside the numbers: Globalquest Staffing Solutions had $12.5 million in revenues last year and projects earnings to top $20 million in 2011.

"We built a strong base of customers and the business has grown every year since it was incorporated," Lorenz says.

Though the numbers are strong, Martin says the staffing business isn't recession-proof and there is no magic formula for surviving in a down economy.

"We had a tough year in 2008," she says. "But with the industry we are in, we knew that it would bounce back in a year to 18 months."

Core business: Many clients are local, but Martin says with the staffing business, Globalquest has the ability to serve clients anywhere in the country.

The staffing business is broad in scope, yet Globalquest focuses primarily on serving the IT and technical needs of clients.

"We are a staff-augmentation firm offering contract, contract divider and direct-hire placements," Lorenz says. "That's what we were incorporated to do. But since then, we have expanded to do outsourcing work and we also do managed-services provider work.

"The core of our business is in Western New York, but we service the entire East Coast. We've also staffed in Wisconsin, California - with modern technology, there is really nowhere we can't staff."

Martin says one niche is the financial services field, anchored by a client that she describes as "a $70 billion financial institution." The company just re-signed with Globalquest Staffing for a three-year contract to provide managed services.

Growing the business: For a local company in a stagnant economy to project growth is a good thing; to jump from $12.5 million in sales to a projected $20 million is virtually unheard of.

"I think one of the largest reasons we are growing is our work as the managed-services provider for a $70 billion financial institution," Lorenz says.

"We went up against national companies to earn that business and to be their managed-services provider. And because we have a good reputation and we were trusted, we were chosen over those larger, national firms."

Biggest challenge: Though they consider themselves partners in their clients' operations, Martin says it can be tricky to have to go into someone's space and, after evaluating things, tell them the hard truth.

She says: "It isn't easy to look at a client and say, 'You know, maybe it might be better if you did it a different way.' It can be tough because you are going in there and telling the IT director of the company, 'You don't know what you're talking about.' "

In the end, the client trust that they focus on, as well as their reputation in the region, allow Martin and Lorenz to be blunt with clients when necessary, to the benefit of the business.  

Principle to live by: "One of the reasons we are doing so well and one of our main philosophies is that we don't gouge our clients," Martin says. "We've built up trust with them and our margins are very reasonable. And with that, we do a lot of volume."

That volume includes working with clients of all sizes, ranging from one that has a single consultant up to its largest client, with 126.

Future plans: Lorenz says a growth area is something called virtual teams.

"Our clients have found it increasingly difficult to manage a high volume of contractors, usually because they don't have the time or the space to do it," she says. "So they now outsource entire projects to Globalquest, and we will take the project from conception through completion."

The company has been in transition since the death of Rick Martin. His wife, who describes him as "irreplaceable," says the company has yet to decide what direction to go to handle the duties he performed with Globalquest.

"He was a big part of the company," she says. "He was our sales force; he was our PR force. We have to figure out how to fill that void. Nobody is going to do it like Rick did."