SIOUX FALLS, SD (KELO) — Last March, based in Minneapolis True North Equity Partners, bought the Canaries from Sioux Falls. Today, the firm’s founder and managing partner, Brian Slipka, is working to expand his business footprint in South Dakota.
“I’m attached to the Sioux Falls market,” Slipka said. “I would like to develop my commercial presence.”
Brian Slipka’s company Twin Cities focuses on acquiring and managing businesses, but he was born in Sioux Falls and has family all over South Dakota. He says the state’s business climate is a big draw.
“You have a pro-business community that attracts people from the pro-business community and companies like ours,” Slipka said. “Very few cities intentionally welcome people like me; it is because there are such opportunities.
His local investments started with the Canaries, but now he is linking his company’s other major industry to Sioux Falls.
“We started consolidating family-owned transportation companies in the Upper Midwest,” Slipka said.
Companies like Dakotaland Transportation are located on I-29 on the north side of Sioux Falls.
“They handle a lot of freight for many well-known local businesses in the community,” Slipka said.
“We do Showplace Cabinetry and we also have a wind power division and haul wind blades on the road,” said Dakotaland employee Heidi Schumacher.
The specialty trucking company lost its longtime owners in an accident along I-29 two years ago.
“Their wives wanted to pass the business on to someone they knew would be good stewards of Bruce and Gerry’s legacy; that’s where we really fit in,” Slipka said.
Slipka says True North is about investing in local businesses and connecting them to the resources of their network of seven transportation companies.
“They have a new recruiter and I’m looking forward to that and the opportunity to hire more drivers,” said Jon Otto, director of transportation operations for Dakotaland.
Otto has been with the company for more than two decades, which many of Dakotaland’s sixty employees have in common.
“I’ve been here 18 years,” Schumacher said. “We are a family.”
“We know all the drivers personally; we have seen their families grow,” Otto said.
It’s a family feeling that Slipka says will continue under its new owner.
“The real opportunity for them moving forward is that they will be part of a larger infrastructure that will provide more and more support over time,” Slipka said.
“I think it will be a benefit for all of us involved,” Otto said.
“It’s going to help us grow and improve in this industry,” Schumacher said.
True North now has an office on Phillips Avenue which includes the addition of Slipka’s other business, Honor Capital for corporate finance and Sunbelt Business Advisors, a firm that will help negotiate future sales of other Dakota-owned businesses. from South.
“There are a lot of great business owners looking to make the transition from work to life and that’s what Sunbelt is doing, we’re helping to support the sales process for business owners,” Slipka said. .
Slipka plans to add half a dozen advisors to the South Dakota Sunbelt team over the next few years, while continuing to expand Dakotaland Transportation’s operations.
