New Media Moves In.

• Author: LAINSON, SUZANNE

Location, location, location. If you're a marathon runner, you move to Boulder. If you want to work for a high-powered Internet agency, you move to New York or San Francisco.

But that may be about to change.

Two international interactive agencies have picked Colorado as regional headquarters and the University of Colorado is developing a state-of-the-art new media center.

iXL, a company with more than 1,700 employees in 20 offices in five countries, landed in the Denver area in 1998 when it acquired CCG Online.

iXL has been aggressively growing, and the Denver office is no exception. According to Tim Roessler, Denver's vice president-creative, it has more than doubled sales over the past year. More importantly, "iXL's Western regional vice president, Greg Waldbaum, decided to make Denver, not San Francisco, Los Angeles or San Diego his home base."

iXL originally helped companies design websites. Now it's positioning itself to go after the same business targeted by giants Anderson Consulting and SAP. Most company sales have come from back-end technology development and systems integration.

Clients being handled out of the Denver office include Budget Rent a Car, eFrenzy, Aspen Skiing, US West and Nikko Hotels.

Tucked away in Avon is the Colorado office of Agency.com, a company with 800 employees in 12 offices in five countries. It acquired the Avon office in 1998 when it merged with Eagle River Interactive. Given its proximity to Vail, the office has found talent in other offices (San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas, London, Paris) happy to relocate. Western regional President Martin Conneen, is a New York transplant. Over the next year the office plans to grow from 50 to 75 employees.

Agency.com's corporate focus is on design and creative, strategy consulting, and systems integration. Clients handled out of the Avon office include Sprint, Storerunner.Com, Wedding Network/Internet Gift Registries and Sterling Jewelers.

Then there's the University of Colorado's new media center, funded by a $1 million grant from Omnicom Group, the world's largest advertising holding company.

According to David Slayden, director of CU's new program, MECA, the...