Dave Mitchell was a broadcasting major at Western Illinois University during the first half of the 2010s. He knew a bit about repairing electronics.
“Me and my roommate at the time, we upgraded the transmitter at 88.3 (the student radio station). So, you can now hear it past Walgreens, and we hang our hat on that a little bit,” Mitchell said.
Given their skills, friends would sometimes bring devices to their residence hall room for help.
“We started to do repairs, and ten years later, here we are,” Mitchell said.
He’s now running a company called iDOC out of the Masonic building in downtown Macomb. It has 17 employees.
“Our focus is on large enterprise repair. People who have tens of thousands of units in their fleet. We do that repair on a mass scale. It’s a little bit different than your standard retail environment,” he said.
Mitchell said iDOC is an authorized service provider. They do in-warranty work for major original equipment manufacturers, repairing a wide range of electronics such as laptops, gaming systems, and industrial tools.
Mitchell graduated from Western in 2015, and now lives in Ohio. But as the company prepares to expand, he’s keeping it in Macomb.
“Our success was built here. And Macomb has been good to us. Our staff is here, our people are here,” Mitchell said.
“We exist for our customers and we exist for our employees.”
The company’s new facility will be built on a three-acre site in Macomb’s industrial park.
Mitchell said he didn’t know the industrial park existed, and didn’t know about incentives to locate there, until he spoke with Kim Pierce, Executive Director of the Macomb Area Economic Development Corporation.
Now, construction of iDOC’s new, 7,500 square foot repair center is underway.
“I’m glad we’re in the spot we’re in and I look forward to many years here,” Mitchell said, adding that they “absolutely” will add employees.
Pierce said that keeping the company in Macomb is a big win for the community.
“We don’t want to lose a business and we don’t want to lose the jobs,” Pierce said. “It is a retention project that we successfully were able to navigate. I’m really proud of that for the city and for Dave.”
As for the name of the company, Mitchell doesn’t have a good reason why it’s called iDOC.
“That’s what I came up with when I started it. I don’t know. I just came up with it one day and it has stuck ever since,” Mitchell said with a laugh.
Mitchell, Pierce city officials, and others gathered for a groundbreaking ceremony for the new facility on Tuesday morning, April 30.
Mitchell hopes they can move in by the end of the year.
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