Photo by Ben Hensley | John Kotman, founder of Kotman Technology, is a Central Valley boomerang. Raised in the Central Valley, he moved to Michigan for his father’s job. After graduating from high school, he returned to Fresno State. He’s now celebrating 20 years of his IT business.

After two decades of growth — from a small apartment to a state-of-the-art Clovis office — Kotman Technology is celebrating its 20th anniversary.

Located at 924 N. Temperance Ave., in Clovis, Kotman Technology will celebrate both its grand opening and 20th anniversary in October, inviting the community to check out its new home built with a focus on client and employee needs, comfort and connection.

Kotman Technology provides IT solutions across industries — from customer support and data-driven insights to security management and monitoring. Its new office gives clients a centralized hub for all their needs.

 

Homecoming

For Founder John Kotman, the milestone is personal; his journey into the tech industry started as a child, when he discovered a fascination with taking things apart and putting them back together.

Kotman moved away from Fresno in middle school when his father took a job in Kalamazoo, Michigan, but the Valley drew him back after high school.

“Coming back was to go to Fresno State, but I also had family and friends in the Central Valley,” he said. “I really enjoyed living here and I wanted to move back.”

After initially envisioning the team expanding to eight people, Kotman has smashed those expectations, growing the team to more than 30 employees serving clients across California and beyond.

 

Outgrowing downtown

The company’s previous Downtown Fresno office expanded several times; originally operating out of the former Bitwise South Stadium building at 700 Van Ness Ave., the need for space eventually became too much, leading the company to seek out its own location.

“We wanted a spot we could call our own,” Kotman said. “We wanted to make sure we could have a great place for our team; tech can be really stressful at times. We made sure to have a great team breakroom, a great place where people could hang out after work if they wanted to.”

Kotman said at the time, options were limited on both available buildings and available land, but about two and a half years ago, the company began developing new space in the Clovis Research and Technology Business Park off Highway 168 and Temperance Avenue.

 

Comfort, collaboration

The office design balances open-concept collaboration with areas for privacy and focus.

“When teams are by each other, collaboration works a whole lot better,” Kotman said. “We wanted to make sure our team had a bunch of natural light, so all of our team has window access.”

The building centers around a conference room, reflecting the company’s emphasis on communication and collaboration. Locally owned Facility Designs and Centerline Design collaborated on the layout.

 

Kotman said the new office is built with flexibility in mind — not just for his team, but also for clients.

“In the past two years, even as we were laying out the floorplan, our teams have changed two or three times in that iteration,” he said. “Many tech companies have gone to be 100% remote and we made the decision to actually not do that.”

 

Personal touch

While Kotman Technology does have some remote workers, Kotman said that in-person relationships are the team’s primary focus. Face-to-face meetings help build more of a connection than over-the-phone or remote video conferencing, he felt.

“You can’t replicate that over [Microsoft] Teams,” Kotman said. “If we can do that in person, it’s a much better experience.”

Kotman Technology serves a range of industries, including agriculture, manufacturing, professional services and nonprofits. Many of these clients work out of physical offices, making the space for surplus equipment at Kotman Technology so much more crucial.

That reality shapes the company’s service model, which includes surplus equipment on standby for emergencies.

“We can typically get things quickly,” he said. “But if something happens immediately — there’s times when someone’s like, ‘Hey, I left my laptop on the roof of my car and I need another one rather quickly’ — those types of things.”

 

Three pillars

Luke Ross, operations manager at Kotman Technology, said the new space enhances client connections.

“One thing that’s been neat about the new office is when clients stop by, I think the environment has created a spot where people can come by and hang out,” he said. “It feels like a place where the team can engage, whether they’re in the break room or with a client.”

Ross said the company’s work is organized around its three pillars: support, security and strategy.

The office, he said, reinforces the last element.

“The strategy element is emphasized in the office — clients seeing that they have a relational partner, one who can take the time to invite them to the office and sit down with a client. That was the goal in developing the new space,” Ross said.

 

Looking ahead

Transitioning into the new building, Kotman said, was relatively smooth partially because of the company’s experience in assisting clients.

“It was kind of, you know, doing a project for ourselves,” Kotman said. “In that regard, we were able to keep both offices operating and move teams at different times throughout a week or so.”

The result: a seamless transition with many clients unaware that the team had even changed locations.

That level of care, Kotman said, reflects what has guided the company since its founding.

“We’ve got a great team of people and it’s been pretty cool to see how it’s grown,” he said.