How it all began...
SearchTec was started with a chance meeting on Broad Street in center city Philadelphia, 1989. Marc Lovenworth, co-founder, was walking south and Jim Mooney and Dot Tittermary, co-founders, were walking north. The three knew each other from their prior business dealings in the Title Industry and struck up a conversation. That conversation turned into a business plan and three months later, SearchTec was open for business.
We started with 10 great employees who were also willing to take a chance and a revenue budget, no customers yet. However, we did have differentiators and a lot of industry knowledge and guts. One by one we won customers that were forward thinking in their business, to take a chance on our new business, in a well-established market. We believed in the future of technological innovation, automation and efficiency, that are still the foundation of the company to this day.
As we got started in the early nineties, we had to fight through a recession and an RTC that was decimating the Savings and Loan industry, a tough way to start. Through hard work and good planning, within 18 months we had enough customers and were processing enough orders to turn a profit, something we are proud to say we have done every year since. Success breeds success and we were soon looking to expand. We opened an office in North Jersey to service our search and appraisal business there and acquired an Abstract company in South Jersey. All the while expanding our customer base and product innovation for our core area. We needed more employees and more space and eventually occupied the entire floor of the office building.
During this time of expansion, tragedy struck SearchTec with the loss of one its founders, Jim Mooney. After Jim passed away, we needed new management to fill his role and added Lance Lenny to run the operation. Under Lance, the company continued to grow but met with new hurdles. There was another recession in the early 2000’s and many bank mergers and consolidation. We looked at our business footprint and decided we needed to expand geographically. We engaged an Investment Banker to lead the search that would culminate in the acquisition of National Data Access Corporation, in South Carolina.
But once again we faced a challenge, the fiscal cliff of 2008. We hunkered down, moving the operation into new space and invested in more modern and efficient equipment. We worked at efficiency, eliminating functions that were no longer required. We developed new products that were adapted to the new reality in our markets. Those efficiencies coupled with our product innovations helped us thrive during those very lean years and increased our market share.
Even through the Great Recession we were able to grow our latest acquisition into a multi state operation servicing national providers, adding a new client base and product lines.
Along our journey we have processed well over TWO MILLION property and business searches, hundreds of thousands real estate appraisals, recorded documents, and provided Title Insurance on thousands of loans, condominium conversions and some of the Marquee buildings in and around Philadelphia and South Jersey.
Today, SearchTec has navigated through another successful Succession Plan. The two remaining founders, Marc and Dot, have retired and have passed the reigns into the capable hands of Lance.
SearchTec’s legacy continues to be innovation, expansion, efficiency and customer experience that will propel it to continued success into the future.