For years, he's been all over the MAPS

Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal - September 16, 2005

Stefanie Secrest - East Bay Business Times
Profit orientation: Under the direction of Michael Desrosiers, Silicon Maps has produced more than 400 caricature maps highlighting local businesses.
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Michael Desrosiers readily admits that caricature city maps weren't his idea.

But 17 years ago, Mr. Desrosiers, founder of Silicon Maps Inc., decided he could build a better map. Today his company has done just that, turning out more than 400 caricature maps and carving a comfortable niche in the world of promotional-map marketing.

The "Where's Waldo?"-esque caricature maps provide an arial view of city businesses, streets and landmarks, and a way for local businesses to gain exposure beyond the yellow pages.

"I just felt I could do a better job," said Mr. Desrosiers, 45, with an affable smile and a shrug of his shoulders. "I have the sales background and the people to create a project that works from start to finish. I can't draw, but I do feel like I have talent for artistic vision and I'm able to relay that to the artists."

With a team of artists, Desrosiers founded City Design -- now a division of Silicon Maps Inc. -- in 1989 out of his house in Pleasanton. The company's first city map depicted Manteca, "because we wanted to start out small."

Santa Cruz was next, followed by hundreds more over the years, including maps for nearly every city in the Bay Area and dozens more across the country. The company now offers maps and calendars for the high-tech and biotech industries, promotional products and Web design.

It was the Silicon Valley map with a listing of high-tech companies that really got the company going in the late 1990s. The Silicon Valley map sold "20 times" more than any city map. That success took a sharp turn south with the dot-com bust, but has since began to pick up.

The San Ramon-based company is now on target to reach $1 million in sales for 2005, climbing back toward the company's $1.7 million zenith reached in 2001.

Mr. Desrosiers smiles when he talks about the high-tech industry map that boomed along with the rest of Silicon Valley in the late 1990s. The first map of the area was "pre-Internet, pre-Yahoo," and included few high-tech businesses.

Over the years the Silicon Valley map -- which differs from caricature maps in that it uses company logos and isn't hand-drawn -- has tracked the ups and downs of business in the Valley.

The map is especially popular in Japan, Mr. Desrosiers noted, because it defines a well-known area that doesn't appear on any official maps.

With the Silicon Valley high-tech map business booming in the late 1990s, Mr. Desrosiers stopped producing city maps. It was all high-tech maps and calendars, all the time.

That strategy nearly backfired when the bottom fell out of tech and Mr. Desrosiers was reminded of a simple business lesson.

"Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Diversify."

The company is back to producing city maps, along with its stable of high-tech and biotechnology industry maps. And this year it has added promotional products such as portable USB drives, cell-phone signal enhancers and the standby Frisbee-style flying disc.

Not all businesses want to be on the map when Silicon Maps calls to sell an ad. On the latest Danville map, for example, about 120 businesses are represented, far fewer than the 1,000 or so in town. Mr. Desrosiers won't leave a big player or landmark off the map and he finds that most long-term businesses want to be represented.

"The cool thing about the maps is that for each city or town we do, all the movers and shakers will want to be on the map," he said. "They know they will be there (in town) for a long time and so will the map."

Danville Cigar owner Joe Secola was thinking "exposure" when he bought an ad on the map. "It's something I looked at and thought it would be kind of cool," Mr. Secola said. "It's kind of a kitschy little map and if this was a larger town I might not have done it, but it was something we wanted to try."

Mr. Desrosiers attributes much of the success of his company to the high artistic quality of the maps, which depict people and buildings in such minute detail that the maps, over time, become a curious sort of historical document. In some cases the maps have sparked high emotions.

Pinned to the wall behind his desk is a dog-eared Santa Cruz map. Produced just before the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the map depicts several downtown buildings that were destroyed in the quake, along with all the local characters and business owners.

Pointing out people and buildings on the map, Mr. Desrosiers recalled the wife of a business owner shown on the Santa Cruz map who called to complain because her husband was shown sitting in a boat as his secretary paddled them into the Pacific.

Resting his finger on another tiny picture of a man standing next to a business sign, Mr. Desrosiers said the man's family called him three years later to request a copy of the map. The man, Desrosiers learned, had died in the earthquake. The family was pleased to find out that their smiling relative occupied center stage on the original Santa Cruz map.

"Some maps have lost money, and of course some make money," said Mr. Desrosiers. "But it's an artistic effort and we try to create a masterpiece with each city map."

Jeff Nachtigal writes for the East Bay Business Times, an affiliated publication.