From his new offce near Esther Short Park in Vancouver, Bruce Davidson has a window on a growing community, and that’s good news for the business he founded, Davidson & Associates Insurance.
“We’re in the heart of downtown, near all the activity that will take place on the waterfront. And we planned our space so we could have room to grow, and we plan to do that in the next few years,” Davidson says. “We prosper when the community prospers.” And when the community doesn’t prosper?
“In 2009, like others, we had to tighten our belt,” he says, explaining how revenues during that time were flat, while expenses climbed and profit margins became constricted.“But we’ve come out of that plateau, and we’ve been blessed with growth. We’ve had double-digit growth in the last three years, and thankfully we’ve been able to grow our team. In July of 2013 there were 10 of us. Today there are 14.”
Davidson founded his company on March 1, 1990, and with the 25th anniversary nearing he’s been reflecting on his history in the industry – and on the company’s future prospects.
Almost nobody gets out of high school or college hoping to go into the insurance industry, he says – and he’s no exception. He worked for more than 10 years in commercial banking, before moving from Nevada to Clark County, and then starting his own business.
“It was me, one part-time person to help set appointments, and no clients,” he remembers.
As with most entrepreneurs, those early years were lean, but he was confident that with hard work he would succeed.
“Thankfully, I have a loving wife who was teaching full time. If our family hadn’t had the benefit of her income, I don’t know if I could have stood on the ledge like I did,” he says. “In year one, I remember going into appointments thinking, I hope they don’t ask me how long we’ve been in business. But I never thought I wouldn’t make it, and God provided.”
A property and casualty insurance company, Davidson & Associates counts small local businesses as a majority of its clients, though the business also does a substantial amount of work with individuals.
The business Davidson leads today is not only larger and more established than when he founded the company – it’s also working with clients to navigate risks nobody was even thinking about back in 1990.
“People weren’t thinking about ID theft and fraud,” he says. “People weren’t worried about their computer systems getting hacked into and data compromised. Ten years ago, if you said ‘cyber liability and data compromise,’ nobody would know what you were talking about. Today, if your data records are compromised, you have to deal with state and federal laws that weren’t on the books 10 years ago, and your insurance can help you with
that.”
As he reflects on the past and steers his company through the present, Davidson also has an eye to the future.
“This summer I’ll be 59, I’m not going anywhere in the longterm,” he says, but he wants to be sure that there are qualified people in place to lead the business when he does eventually decide to retire.
To that end, he praises Tony Johnson, commercial agent, as a “leader for the future,” and says he also hopes his son, Bryce Davidson, continues with the business in the long-run. “Tony is 12 years my junior, and Bryce is 13 years his junior, so we have longevity in leadership,” Davidson says. “We have great leadership for the future, and they’re committed to the community. We are a business that wants to be here.”
Editor’s note: Davidson Insurance is a member of the Vancouver Business Journal’s Strategic Partners Program. To learn more about the program, contact Irene Pettengill at 360.448.6013.
