Ray Remembers When

The Data Domain - First Location

The first Data Domain was at 111 South College, about 30 feet off the Court House square, in all of 750 sq. ft. of space. Of course that didn't last too long, and we soon moved to 406 South College, four blocks down the street. When that got too small, we moved to 221 West Dodds, which was two blocks further south, in a brand new building right at the end of College Ave.

Bloomington [Indiana] has two main drags; one is College Ave. and runs from north to south; the other is Walnut St. and runs from south to north. They straddle the Court House. No need for two stores even in those days. Bloomington only had 50,000 people plus 35,000 students. Even today, 24 years later the whole county population is less than 125,000 plus the usual 35,000 students. The city has grown to about 65,000.

So you see, to survive here we had to attract business from elsewhere, and we did. We had customers from all over the US, Canada, Mexico and even Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Guam, the Philippines and Australia. So much so that there was never enough capital to expand properly, especially in the world of COD deliveries from manufacturers who were financed just as badly as we were. It was a crazy life, and we sure had fun!