Marcus Ebanks in motion...

Striding through his store and showroom, saying hello to customers and staff with that booming voice of his, there is no mistaking the energy level Marc Ebanks brings with him wherever he goes. It is almost a tangible thing, a magnetic force that instills confidence in people. So if there is a problem, he can sort it out and quickly.

At the end of the day, Marc delivers time and time again. And part of his brimming enthusiasm is that he just knows that he's got your back.
It's like when he was sitting across the desk from one of his clients – the stressed-out office manager of a busy local company. Piles of papers were everywhere, covering every available space; the file cabinets were bursting. The office manager was desperate for more filing cabinets, but there was really no space for them.

So Marc offers to set her up with a trial version of this new software, Intact Smart which allows you to scan papers and store them electronically. If an invoice or a report needs to be retrieved, even with thousands of documents, the system is set up in a way that it can with a few keystrokes on the computer, pull up a file on the screen within seconds. It is much quicker than pulling out filing drawers and shuffling through colour coded hanging files – looking for a report that was put away six months ago.

And these days, computer storage is so compact and economical; it takes up so much less space than file cabinets.

The stressed out office manager has nothing to lose because the two-week trial software was free. Three days later, Marc got another call from the stressed out office manager. She wanted to know, 'How much does this system cost?' Within a week, she had sent Marc a cheque. Marc had lost a sale on file cabinets, but he gained a sale on the document management system. He was okay with it.

That happened a couple years ago and in the short time since, the technology for document management system has been in a constant state of change. Today with this system, you can access your documents and applications from any computer connected to the Internet in the world. They can also be accessed directly from a Blackberry, iPhone and just about any smartphone.

"We learned from Hurricane Ivan that you can't rely solely on paper to store your vital documents," said Marc. "Water creeps into buildings, roofs get blown off. Staffs from large corporate firms get flown off the island in a chartered jet. During an evacuation for an oncoming hurricane, you can't bring filing cabinets on the plane with you. That is just not going to fly.
"But if their files are backed up at another location, they can still be accessed and retrieved anywhere. So when your staff sets up a temporary office in Canada or the British Virgin Islands or wherever, they are good to go. It is that simple.
"It's important to think about how and where you are going to back up your records. Statistics show that if you can't access your documents within a week or two after a natural disaster, then the chances of you staying in business drops dramatically.

"It is imperative that after a hurricane or another natural disaster – you have got to get up and running immediately. Because if you are not, your competitor down street will be and he will gladly take your customers off your hands," said Marc.

Local boy makes good
Even though Marcus has a little more grey in his hair than he wants, and a grown daughter, he still feels like the local boy who grew up in West Bay to parents, who knows what it is like to work hard for a living. He was the youngest of five children and his parents had to work hard to make ends meet. After staying home for the kids while they were younger, his mother worked as a maid for a condominium. Marc still recalls barely learning to walk and going off to work with his mother, not really doing any real work but it made it him feel he was helping and that was good.

His father was a seaman merchant marine for many years. To be closer to his family, he would later take a job in Cayman as an all around Mr. Fix it man doing maintenance, carpentry, plumbing and painting.

"I thought my mom worked hard until I was ten years old and I went to work with my father," said Marcus, chuckling. "He worked ten times harder than she did. "Working with him gave me character and that abiding belief in myself. And I try to do that with my kids today."

Marcus graduated from Cayman Islands School, now known as John Gray High School, in 1989.

He desperately wanted to go to the US to get a college degree, but his parents didn't` have the money to send him and he didn't have the funds either.

So he went to work at a local company for a couple years and saving money. In his spare time, he also worked on building his own scholarship fund by getting local businesses and people to pitch in donations. Most of them were small, $5 to $25, but Marc kept at it until he raised nearly $4900. His parents also took out a bank loan and so he went off to Atlanta, Georgia to study computer engineering at Devry Institute of Technology.

To make ends meet, he took a part-time job at Office Depot, which would be a springboard to starting his own business years later. But he didn't know that at the time – it was just a part-time job.

All the while he was in school; he was also getting the insider's view of the most successful office supply business in the US at the time. Office Depot was all about inventory, product delivery and customer service in high-octane mode.
After finishing his degree, he got a job at Xerox Corporation, as service engineer servicing copiers, scanners, fax machines and other office equipment, but he still kept his part-time job at Office Depot working nights and weekends.

Living in the US was good for him. Coming from a small country, everyone knows if they are going to do business with you, because they know your family, they seen you grow up, and their kids went to primary school with your kids. But in the US, none of that counts. There are 350 million people living there and while the US may be the land of opportunity, business is also a dog-eat-dog world. It is a hustler's world so if you can survive in the fast-paced business world in the US – you can almost be certain you can survive anywhere.

Marcus had been working for Xerox for almost five years when he got the call that would change his life again. It was his mother.

"Your father is sick. It is time come home son," she said.

Nine years after packing his bags to go to school in the US, Marc was returning home to the Cayman Islands.

Starting business
Coming home didn't seem to slow down Marcus career. He worked for the local Xerox dealer for a time, servicing copiers, fax machines and other office equipment. But it was obvious that Marcus wasn't going to last. The local Xerox dealer didn't do business at the high energy level he was used to in the US. He was ready to go out on his own. The fact of the matter was - everything he had been working towards: his computer engineering degree, his work for Xerox and Office Depot, was laying the foundation for starting his own business in the Cayman Islands. The moment of truth was coming quickly.

Marc was servicing a copy machine in a local law firm when he overheard the office manager complaining about the poor customer service she was getting for some office supplies she had ordered. He just couldn't help himself. He took the bull by horns and asked her what she needed and she told him.
So Marc said, "If I could get you those supplies tomorrow, will you do business with me?"

She said yes. So he gets her list and faxes it to Office Depot in Atlanta. His colleague there fills the order and puts it on a Delta flight the next day. Marc picks up the goods from the airport at 2 pm and heads straight over to the firm.
When he walks into the building, goods in tow, the office manager was stunned.
"So she tells me – 'You have it already?' She cuts me a cheque right there. And then she says, 'Marc if we are going to keep doing business together – I have a suggestion. Can you get a business license so it looks legitimate?'

"I didn't even know what a business licence was. But they just happened to have a lawyer down the hall who could incorporate my business. So all the money I had just made on that first sale, I paid it all back to get a corporation set up," he said.

That is how Marcus initial office supply business, OfficeWorx, got started, but it was only the start. He needed capital to do it properly. He shopped around to all the banks, trying to get a business loan, but he had no assets and no track record so no one would take him on. Basically, he had $500 and a credit card and some moxie and that was all he had.

"I built my business one customer at a time, one order at time. I gave my customers great service and they responded to that. The business caught on from there," said Marcus.

It is a struggle to get established, but he was doing it. He was able to open up a retail store and hire employees and things were going well. But Hurricane Ivan, a category five hurricane struck the Cayman Islands in late 2004 and like many businesses; he was forced to come to terms with the destruction of his life's work. Standing in midst of the debris that used to be his business was heartbreaking, no doubt about it.

But undaunted – he found a new location and started again. Because that is what entrepreneurs do when they are driven to make things work. It is inconceivable that he would ever give up.

He found another location and re-opened the store just two months later. And it was clear when he re-opened the store, he still had a solid customer base.
Today, the OfficeWorx store is doing better than ever. Marc is quick to credit his wife, Reina, for providing the practical business sense that has made it grow. She has a way of directing his boundless energy in the right direction and after years of this, their business partnership works well.

Documents in Motion
Seeing the trend toward electronic document systems a couple years ago, Marc started Documents in Motion. It caters to the same client base and it just makes sense. He brings that same level of relentless energy to Documents in Motion as he has done all along.

"Everywhere around the world, more and more businesses are going paperless. Not every document has to be hard copy today. They are not growing sustainable forests as fast as people think they are growing.

"The average tree takes about 10 to 15 years to get any size at all. And in Cayman, we don't have enough room to put all our trash as it is. Cayman is a small country and we have to work within those limitations.

"Going paperless makes good environmental sense and good business sense. I am going to be an integral part of putting Cayman on the forefront of this trend to going paperless. Because that is my passion and I never give up."