Friendliness won Utah new Encover operation

SANDY — Encover Inc. has nestled some of its operations in Utah despite its top executive earlier this year feeling like he was in the "Twilight Zone."

Chip Overstreet, the California-based company's president and chief executive officer, on Thursday described being taken aback by the friendliness of Utahns he met in January and how that helped lead his company to put 40-plus employees in Sandy.

A fellow at a car rental counter extended his hand and welcomed Overstreet to Salt Lake City. "I shook his hand and I thought, 'You know, that is pretty unique.' I do a lot of traveling, I rent a lot of cars and I've never had that experience before. That was an interesting insight," Overstreet said at the Sandy operation's grand opening.

Another fellow at the rental-car company did likewise. "At this point, I'm thinking 'Twilight Zone,' " Overstreet said.

Shortly thereafter, the second man suggested Overstreet buy insurance for his visit. That caught his attention because Encover sells service contracts and maintenance agreements on behalf of high-tech manufacturers including Xerox, Motorola, Kodak, Sonicwall and Corda.

"I'm thinking, 'Not only are these guys friendly, but they know how to sell. This is a good first impression,' " Overstreet recalled.

Encover narrowed down 11 cities for its sales-office site and three finalists emerged: Salt Lake/Sandy, Boise and Phoenix. The company considered eight criteria in making the final choice. "The ultimate decisionmaking came down to one thing, and that was the people — the people we interacted with," Overstreet said.

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. listed several attributes that make Utah attractive to out-of-state companies, and Overstreet echoed many of them.

"You've got such a wealth of things that you can choose from. You've got mountains and incredible quality of life and economic diversity, and there's so much that you've got going," Overstreet said. "But I would urge you to consider people at the center of that, because that really is the reason why we came here. It's the people."

Huntsman commended the company's board for discovering Utah, which he described as "a hidden jewel, an oasis, less hidden today than perhaps before and in the future not hidden at all, because I think that many of the corporate world will find the magic that Utah has to offer."