Pink Dot Hopes to Make Its Mark in Camarillo
Excuse Ventura resident Dan Frederickson if he seems to be repeating himself.
As president of Kinko’s from 1986 to 1997, Frederickson helped steer the company from a small-scale copy shop based in Santa Barbara County to an office-services giant headquartered in Ventura County.
Now, as an executive of the Pink Dot grocery delivery operation of Los Angeles, he has a similar business plan in mind.
Frederickson, who was appointed chief executive of Pink Dot last December, plans to relocate the corporate headquarters and 20 employees to a 6,000-square-foot location on Daily Drive in Camarillo by the beginning of August.
The move, Frederickson said, is the foundation of a planned expansion that calls for more than doubling the company’s size by the end of 1999 and ballooning the operation more dramatically over the next five years.
Pink Dot, founded in 1987, is a privately held grocery and fresh-food delivery service with seven distribution centers in the Los Angeles area, including the San Fernando Valley. Each location is stocked with grocery items and equipped with delis and bakeries for fresh food preparation.
Customers in the greater Los Angeles area can shop by phone or over the Internet, from 9 a.m. to 3 a.m. daily, with delivery promised within 30 minutes. Product prices are comparable to those at conventional grocery stores, with an additional $2.99 delivery charge added to the order.
Pink Dot is similar to a small number of other shop-from-home grocery services including Peapod, headquartered in Illinois, and HomeGrocer.com, based in Washington state.
“This company started with one store in 1987 and didn’t add the next store until the mid-1990s,” Frederickson said. “We’re planning pretty rapid growth now. We hope to open at least 12 more sites in Southern California by year’s end. We also hope to go into another [geographical] market we haven’t identified yet.”
Pink Dot, which employs about 300 workers, serves around 2,000 customers daily in Los Angeles, Pasadena, Beverly Hills, North Hollywood, Burbank and two dozen other Southern California communities. Frederickson sees the customer base growing quickly as new distribution centers open.
The company plans to open an additional 250 to 300 distribution centers within five years, Frederickson said. He said transferring the executive and administrative offices to Camarillo is part of the strategic plan.
“When I took over the company I wanted to position it for growth, and part of that is getting the company in an environment that supports its growth,” he said. “I think Camarillo is an absolutely great place to grow a business. The location is not stellar, but the work force is good and I think the work force can have a very good quality of life.”
Aside from a Ventura County corporate address, Frederickson admits there are other similarities between his former employer, Kinko’s, and Pink Dot.
“Availability is the ultimate form of customer service,” he said. “We’re going to be open 24 hours in a while, like Kinko’s. Both companies take advantage of technology through the Internet and through very-high-technical telephone systems. They are both businesses where execution is phenomenally important.”
Unlike Kinko’s, which has branches throughout the county, Pink Dot delivery is not likely to be available locally any time soon.
“The population density just is not there in the smaller communities,” Frederickson said.
