Columbia’s Innovators Keep Pushing

This year marks Shelter Insurance’s 70th anniversary since it opened its doors as MFA Insurance in 1946. As one of Columbia’s oldest and largest companies, Shelter has become a community cornerstone.

Shelter recently earned J.D. Power’s highest ranking in customer satisfaction among auto insurers in the group’s central region. The team at Shelter is committed to pushing forward and trying new things, including the launch of a new insurance brand.

Marc Deiter is the director of Say Insurance, a new online, direct-channel brand launched by Shelter this year. This brand is the equivalent of Allstate’s Esurance, Deiter says. Customers can use the website or the call center to find quotes and purchase insurance.

Deiter recalls the launch, which took place in the Chicago market. Say Insurance went live on August 19, at 10:15 a.m. Deiter and his team used various analogies to describe the process. Among them: giving birth, finishing the first lap of a race, and “preparing for a stage show,” he says. “We’ve done all the rehearsals; now we pull back the curtains, turn the lights on, and people are starting to show up.”

Shelter carefully planned and tracked Say’s opening weeks. “We did a very soft opening on purpose, to govern the traffic and figure out where the bugs are,” says Deiter. “We’re still doing that.”

There are three ways a customer can buy property and casualty insurance: captive agent, independent agent, and direct channel. Direct channel insurance has been in the market for about 20 years, so it’s relatively new when compared to the two more traditional methods. In the independent agent model, an insurance agent sells products from multiple insurance companies, which allows them to help their customers shop around for a policy. Shelter branched into this field in 2006, when the company purchased Haulers Insurance, based in Tennessee.

But Shelter has largely operated under the captive agent model for most of the company’s history, meaning the company contracts with agents who exclusively sell Shelter products. According to Deiter, Shelter’s captive agent channel continues to grow in policy count and premium. So why bother with the other two models? Anna Hargis, Shelter’s director of advertising, says, “Part of our growth and innovation is to diversify our risk.”

With Shelter’s traditional model, its acquisition of Haulers, and now the launch of Say, the company can operate in all three channels. MacLellan believes the forward momentum started with Haulers. “That got everybody thinking that there are different ways that we can sell insurance,” he says. “We’ve grown from that standpoint.”

Hargis agrees: “I personally think it’s a neat time to be here. I got to help out with Say, and helping to build a new brand — that’s extraordinary. Marc was phenomenal to work with, and I think there’s a lot of potential for this brand. I got to help put the marketing team in place, and now, as I’m stepping back, it’s so much fun to watch them fly.”

Deiter sees a similar energizing effect from Say’s development. He says: “It created a lot of excitement, a lot of energy. I think it’s part of our challenge, in launching Say, to learn about new things — whether it be technology or processes — and share those with the rest of the business. I encourage them to let us be their testing ground.”

In keeping with Shelter’s soft opening and slow-growth plan, Say won’t expand to other states until next year. In the meantime, though, Shelter continues servicing its existing channels, even as it looks to the future.

Keeping It Simple

Like Shelter, CM Engineering built new solutions on top of decades of history. CM Engineering’s design of the OHM Professional Office Building, on Columbia’s northeast side, earned the building an Energy Star rating of 98; by that measure, OHM is one of the most energy efficient buildings in the EPA’s Energy Star program, and the most efficient in Columbia.

Since construction ended in 2014, the building has amassed an impressive list of awards for green design and energy efficiency. Among those are the 2015 Mayor’s Climate Protection Award and a 2016 Technology Award from ASHRAE, a national heating and cooling organization.

OHM is named for Bill Oswald, of Simon Oswald Architecture; Jen Hedrick, also of SOA; and Kirk Mescher, of CM. The three collaborated to design the building and now share it as tenants, along with Working Spaces, an office furniture dealer.

Mescher, who co-founded CM Engineering with Dennis Cotter, passed away in 2015, but his attitude still guides the company’s employees. CM’s CEO, Kent Hayes, says that no matter the project: “Kirk always made his goal clear. K.I.S.S. — keep it simple, stupid!” Mescher was adamant about creating the most efficient office building in Columbia, and OHM stands as a validation of Mescher’s practicality and efficiency.

Of the design partnership with Simon Oswald Architecture, Hayes says, “Both companies started around the same time, and we grew up together, you might say.” Having worked in the same building in downtown Columbia for years, SOA and CM were both thinking about moving out of their rental space and investing in their own property. The three partners in the design “had the same vision and wanted to make a showplace of the innovative things that we do,” Hayes says.

The OHM building is heated and cooled using Mescher’s One Pipe geothermal exchange, which removes excess heat from the building during warmer months and stores the energy in the earth to be used for heating in winter. Geothermal HVAC saves 30 to 40 percent on cooling over traditional systems and 50 to 60 percent on heating.

Behind the building is a rainwater reservoir, which provides the water needed to operate the toilets in the building and irrigate the grounds. SOA incorporated reclaimed materials into the building plans. Some of the bricks used to build OHM were left over from the construction of the Broadway Hotel, and concrete blocks from Battle High School were also used.

LED lighting, efficient insulation, and an energy recovery wheel, which Mescher helped develop years ago while working at SEMCO, a systems engineering company, combine with other features in OHM to showcase some of the most energy-saving and cost-efficient technology available.

The word “sustainability” gets thrown around a lot when it comes to designs like OHM. But Hayes says: “Our goal is efficient use of energy and efficient use of space. CM has been designing simply efficient systems since its inception. Sustainability is a great and wonderful thing, but CM Engineering was efficient before people were talking about sustainability.” For that reason, Mescher and the others decided to forego solar panels, which are certainly sustainable, but not yet as cost-efficient as geothermal HVAC and LED lighting.

When Hayes says the companies wanted to show off what they could do, he means it literally. The geothermal water pumps and other machinery, usually hidden behind walls and in utility closets, are plainly visible in CM’s office space, out in the open, with plaques explaining their uses and benefits. Several different styles of water pumps are on display in the office, and the gauges showing the pumps’ energy usage can be seen through a glass door directly behind the reception desk.

CM and the other tenants make sure that their work is being seen. “We’re always having lunch-and-learns and open houses and different events to educate and inform people of what we’re doing here,” Hayes says. “It’s like a lab. You can walk around and see everything, feel it, touch it — for the more mechanical maintenance guys, who will take care of [the equipment in the systems CM designs], when they can touch it, feel it, and look at it, they have a sense of, ‘Yeah, I can take care of that. That’s not complicated.’ And that communicates the idea of keeping it simple.”

Community Culture

Adam Wells-Morgan and Dan Dethrow have brought something new to Columbia by honoring their roots. Friends since high school, the two have spent years honing their skills (Dethrow is a bartender, Wells-Morgan a chef) and dreaming of opening their own restaurant. This past year, their dream came true — with the help of the online crowdfunding platform, Kickstarter.

FlyOver is the result of those years of planning, and it reflects the duo’s commitment to creating a place that blends Midwest traditions with cutting-edge culinary excellence. And the name of the restaurant reflects that, with a wink. “All of our friends on the coasts will call our part of the country ‘flyover states,’ and we feel that represents the idea that there’s nothing worth stopping here to see,” Wells-Morgan says. “We’re poking fun at that with what we’re doing here.”

The goal, he says, is hyper-regionality: “We’re trying to establish an identity for Midwestern food. The Midwest is a melting pot of a whole bunch of different cultures and styles. People tend to gravitate here because it’s a really nice place to live, so we get all kinds of influences here. The food is very unique. We focus predominantly on land-based animals and freshwater seafood here. We don’t do saltwater seafood here because it’s not indigenous.”

Dethrow stocks the bar with Missouri wines and beers, and he adds new ingredients to classic cocktails to create a signature taste. Lately, he says, “We’ve been playing with different kinds of Old Fashioneds. Our Old Fashioned is very distinctly from here — we make a special syrup that we put in it. Right now we have a rum Old Fashioned on the menu that’s pretty cool. We use a Fernet-Branca, which is a bitter herbal liqueur, luxardo maraschino cherry juice, and things like star anise and cloves. It’s a really cool flavor profile.”

Wells-Morgan and Dethrow want to return to a sense of communal dining, so there are no televisions, and the kitchen and bar are open to the dining area.

The centerpiece of the restaurant is its wood-fired brick oven, a system that Wells-Morgan first worked with at Trattoria Stradda Nova, in Columbia, as a 17-year-old. Dethrow says: “A lot of people see it and think that we only do pizzas in it, but they are really versatile. We cook duck, meatballs, macaroni and cheese, soft pretzels in there. It gives a nuance of flavors.”

The oven was paid for, in part, by the Kickstarter campaign, spearheaded by the pair’s friend, Josie Zimmerman. The campaign offered FlyOver-themed packages for different levels of support. The highest level earned the supporter a brick in the oven with their name engraved on it. The campaign raised $21,000 from 110 supporters in just 30 days.

Zimmerman wasn’t surprised by the enthusiasm of their supporters. “Knowing what they’re capable of, and then to be able to see them do it on their own, without guidance or structure from others, just letting their voices be heard — I was confident that it was really going to be a great thing.”

Using the Kickstarter platform to make their dream a reality helped Wells-Morgan and Dethrow draw an audience together around their vision. It’s a philosophy that works in Columbia — for FlyOver, Shelter, CM Engineering, and many more.