Marketing firm moving to Utah, bringing more than 1,000 jobs

By Brice Wallace

A California-based digital marketing and technology company will place operations in Draper, creating a little more than 1,000 jobs over the next several years and making it the company’s headquarters.

The announcement by Scorpion Design LLC came after the company was approved for a nearly $3.4 million tax credit incentive over five years by the Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED) board.

The Utah office will be an expansion but become the company’s home office.

“Frankly, we love Salt Lake,” CEO Daniel Street told the GOED board. “We love the people, we love the climate, we love the attitude here, so we hope this is going to be our long-term home.”

Scorpion provides business growth services, technology solutions and software applications to small and medium-sized businesses across the country to help them attract more customers, improve operational efficiency and increase revenue. It uses artificial intelligence models to figure out exactly how a business should grow, execute on its growth plan intelligently, and give it support along the way. The company has a large customer base, including lawyers, doctors, home services, local franchises and more.

“What we do is we help small businesses grow, and we do that through a combination of artificial intelligence models and world-class service. … The result is, we have incredible retention — by far the best in the industry — and we’re growing like a weed,” Street said.

“It’s really an interesting company,” said Mel Lavitt, who filled in as acting GOED board chair during the meeting and is chairman of the board’s incentives committee. “It’s doing something that is different. It’s a software business but it’s different. It’s not just a software business that can be used for one or two applications. It’s a pretty holistic type of offering.”

The company has about 900 employees and recently raised $100 million in outside capital. “And as part of that, we need to hire a bunch of people,” Street said. “We need to hire a bunch of really good people.”

The new jobs in Utah are expected to pay an average of $121,871. Scorpion is based in Valencia, California, with another main office in Texas. The company also considered Dallas for the expansion project.

Matthew Shepherd, the company’s chief financial officer, said Scorpion expects about one-third of its employee count to be in Utah, with 500-600 worker in Southern California, and about 500 between offices in Texas and Nevada. Another 1,000 will work remotely.

“That is our projection,” Street said, “but I will tell you, what I would like to do is have almost all of our employees be based in Salt Lake City.”

Asked about remote workers, he said he would “love nothing more to have an in-office culture, and that’s our goal. But we’re also open to the fact that people may want to relocate to small towns throughout the country and we’re not going to give up on great talent because they’ve decided to live in Bend, Oregon. But certainly we are an office-first culture, and that’s what we want to keep being.”

The $18.9 million Utah project is expected to generate new total wages over five years of nearly $340 million, and new state revenue is projected at $16.9 million during that time.

“Scorpion chose Utah based on the state’s personal and family lifestyles as well as its fast-growing technology environment,” Dan Hemmert, GOED’s executive director, said in a prepared statement. “We’re excited Scorpion has decided to grow in Utah, and we’re pleased to help bring new high-paying jobs to the state.”

“While the ‘work from anywhere’ experiment has pumped the brakes on our IT pipeline over the last year, Scorpion exemplifies an exciting resurgence in interest,” said Theresa A. Foxley, president and CEO of the Economic Development Corporation of Utah. “We welcome the company to Utah’s tech scene and expect it’s a harbinger of more to come.”