spark360 Behind The Scenes: Cobalt Real Estate Services

The crew and I at spark360 were debating whether or not to mention the model name for the compact sweeper trucks that make up Cobalt Real Estate Services’ fleet. They’re TYMCO 210′s, which I thought sounded kind of cool and sporty, a high-tech-type label for the next generation of maintenance vehicles. I’m not saying they’re ready for the NASCAR circuit, although it’s fun to indulge a leap of the imagination that pictures one of these vehicles covered with endorsements, fighting for the pole in a Daytona 500 of maintenance vehicles – which would of course include zambonis and street washers.

It’s probably a good thing we decided to go with “sweeper trucks;” with spark360′s exclusive global distribution model, we might have caused a worldwide run on TYMCO 210′s.

Believe it or not, the preceding absurdist digression does have a point; Cobalt and its co-founder/president, Adam Teckman, has invested in some top-flight equipment to help with its goal of providing top-flight maintenance services for large commercial properties, like shopping centers and malls. It’s a commitment that customers can see, along with the Cobalt logo, and it speaks to the professional attitude that Teckman hopes will separate his company from a large group of small, independent vendors.

Those vendors can focus exclusively on landscaping, or cleanup/porter services, or electrical repairs, but Cobalt promises to bring all those services under one roof for property managers looking for simplicity and organization.

So there was the TYMCO 210 making its way across a North Dallas shopping center parking lot on a sunny Thursday when we shot the Cobalt business news feature for spark360. The vehicles stops at our location and out of the cab hops Teckman, a young Texas Christian University graduate who gave up an important job with Troy Aikman’s commercial development company to start his own business. You have to admire someone who can say goodbye to that kind of position with a major player in retail development to do his own thing. It’s the kind of story that propels the U.S. economy – small and medium businesses taking chances to build something vital out of an idea for an underserved industry segment, a new product or, in Cobalt’s case, a need that Teckman felt wasn’t being met in the right way.

Teckman was responsible for managing a slew of shopping centers across the Southwest, making sure the parking lots were cleaned, the trash cans emptied and the light poles were working. But his frustrations in finding the right people to get those jobs done on a regular basis led him to fill those needs himself with his new company.

And he doesn’t mind jumping behind the wheel of a TYMCO 210 to get the job done. When he does, he joins a long line of entrepreneurs fighting to be first in the fast lane to success.

- Renay San Miguel