PRESS & NEWS

Austin Chronicle: Best of Austin Award, 2007

Keeping Austinites on the move since 1988, veteran "BOA" winner Blue Whale do more than just pack 'em up and move 'em out. In addition to residential and commercial moving services, they also offer cleaning and make-ready specials, as well as space in their 23,000-square-foot storage facility.

Blue Whale is the Official Moving & Storage Company for the Austin Toros

Austin Chronicle: Best of Austin Award, 2005

No strangers to this award, Blue Whale Moving is the largest locally owned moving company in Austin. Packing, shipping, storing, and even cleaning up the space you just exited are all part of their repotoire. We love the fact that their employees are full time and not simply contracted out. Our readers love their Free Move Quote online form - handy and high tech, just like the big guys, but with a whale of an Austin flair.

Entrepreneur Magazine's Guide To Business Start-Ups. Sept. 1993
Money Hunt

Your Own Backyard
For many entrepreneurs, borrowing begins at home. The first obvious place to look is in your own pocket, or in a partner's. For Blake Miller, the 28-year-old president of Blue Whale® Moving Company, Inc. in Austin, Texas, it was easy. His partner approached him. "I did a moving job for him while I was still in college," Miller says, "and he told me to come back when I graduated." Miller did, and partner Brad Armstrong invested $10,000 to help finance the new venture. Today, Blue Whale® estimates 1993 sales at nearly $1 million.

AdInfinitum, Bonner & Tate March 1994
A Whale of an Idea
Effective Marketers Place Values Over Image

If you call Blue Whale® Moving Company in Austin to inquire about transporting your family's possessions across town, you won't get a price estimate. Instead, you'll get the company's "vision statement" read to you. Something about values and moral and ethical excellence. It really doesn't have anything to do with hauling boxes. Or does it?

Brad Armstrong, co-owner of Blue Whale® Moving Company, asks dramatically. "If you're not doing the right things and living your values, what's the point?" Armstrong believes the Blue Whale® vision is the most important thing his customers should known about the company. "If a customer just wants a price, I can give him names of several other companies. We're offering something different."That "something different" concept, intangible as it is, was recently identified in an article by Inc. Magazine. "Our vision statement was built from the bottom up. We all developed it together and we've never known any other way," says Blue Whale's Armstrong. "Then we created a training program for incoming employees so everyone knows right from the start what Blue Whale® is all about."

While the initial investment in developing character is significant, so are the long-term payoffs. Character instills pride in the organization and teaches employees how to behave when no one is looking over their shoulders. It delights customers, who refer new business, and journalists who write good things about the company. Together, employees, suppliers, customers, and journalists become an unpaid but highly credible sales force, reducing a company's expenses for promoting itself.

"We try to be innovative. In fact, if it has been done before by someone else, I tend to reject it. Ironically, I have seen our competitors copying the style of our ads. They just don't understand that our success goes so much deeper than just words on a page," says Armstrong.

The Austin Chronicle - October 1992
Best of Austin
Best way to get from point A to point B

BLUE WHALE® MOVERS
Even if they don't have the coolest trucks in town they'd get our vote. Fast, cheap, and courteous, this homegrown outfit got its start back in 1988 when Blake Miller was a UT student, hefting furniture for spare cash. His savvy so impressed Brad Armstrong that Armstrong offered to back him in the business and the rest, as they say, is history. Now the big blue leviathans can be spotted in Houston and the Miller-Armstrong team has plans for Dallas, too, with national expansion a possibility. Will success spoil the Moby movers? Whale see.

May 1993
Austin's finalists for the 1993
Entrepreneur of the Year Award

What do you get when you cross a personal injury lawyer with a psychology major? Why, a moving company, of course. With a name like Blue Whale®, which the two arrived at during an intense brainstorming session, the moving company had to do one of two things: sink or swim. After four years in business, Armstrong, the lawyer, and Miller, the UT psychology graduate, are doing much more than just staying afloat. The company netted more than $1 million last year and expects to make a cool $1.7 million this year.

"We're thrilled about it," Armstrong said of being named a finalist. "But I really give all the credit to Blake (Miller). He let me persuade him to be a 23-year-old president of his own company.

Special Issue: 13th. Annual Inc. 500

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Blue Whale® Moving Co., is ranked #322 for 1993
Blue Whale® Moving Co. Austin, TX Provides residential & commercial moving services.

Sales growth 1989-'93 (% increase) : 815
1993 Sales: $1,665,000.00
1989 Sales: $182,000
Profit Range in 1993: F
Profit Range in 1989: D
Number of Employees in 1993: 49
Number of Employees in 1989: 9
Date Founded: 1988