Albuquerque isn't a particularly small city — rankings show the Duke City sits around 30th on the list of largest cities by population in the U.S. with around 560,000 people. But in some ways it can have a smaller-town feel, according to Chris Ziomek, the CEO of Albuquerque-based disinfectant robotics company Build With Robots.
"It's one of the strengths we have here in New Mexico," Ziomek said. "[Albuquerque] is a decent-sized city, but it's small enough that you're one or two steps away from everybody in the state."
That close-knit aspect of New Mexico's business community leads to unique opportunities for companies in the state to form partnerships with other firms in the Land of Enchantment — Build With Robots included.
The Albuquerque robotics company, which offers a line of disinfectant robots including a large automated fogging unit called Breezy One and a smaller automated fogging unit called Breezy Blue, has, over the past year, struck up business partnerships with a few different companies in New Mexico.
Those partnerships, Ziomek said, have surfaced from people he and others who work with Build With Robots know in the business community. Word of mouth, he said, can go a long way.
One example of word of mouth leading to a Build With Robots business partnership is Dion's, a pizza and sub sandwich company based in Albuquerque with locations in different parts of the state. The pizza company opened a new, large commissary facility in Albuquerque in late February 2023.
Before officially opening the new commissary, Mark Herman, Dion's CEO, said he started talking with Build With Robots about applying its disinfectant robotics tech to help keep the massive commissary clean.
"Chris [Ziomek] and I ran into each other at some point," Herman said. "It really just came from networking in Albuquerque and realizing that they might be on to something that had different applications than just like airports and schools."
Airports and schools are two examples of where Build With Robots has previously applied its disinfectant robotics products. But with Dion's commissary, Ziomek said Build With Robots, because of the unique opportunity presented in providing its products to help sanitize the facility, developed a new disinfectant chemistry used in its robots.
Rather than use the initial disinfectant, called Breezy BioCare, the company developed through Sandia National Laboratories, which Ziomek said contains a small amount of quaternary ammonium compounds, Build With Robots evaluated different chemistries for the Dion's application and developed the new disinfectant, called Breezy BioPure, which is made with a blend of hydrogen peroxide and water.
"That came strictly out of Dion's," Ziomek said. "We realized for food preparation markets, which is a place that sanitizes regularly, we now have a product that can fit that need."
The pizza company currently uses two of Build With Robots' Breezy Blue robots with Breezy BioPure disinfectant at its commissary, alongside four sensors inside food preparation rooms to monitor their air quality. The partnership, Herman, Dion's CEO, said, has been "really good" over the course of the past year the two companies have worked together.
"The cool thing about working with Build With Robots and having them be local is that their whole development team is here," Herman said. "So, if we have questions or if we want to ask how something works or look at the results over time, they've been really helpful with us about adapting it to our needs. That's been a lot faster since they're local."
Other New Mexico companies partner with Build With Robots
But Dion's isn't the only New Mexico company to strike up a business partnership with Build With Robots. The disinfectant firm has notable work with a few other companies for various applications.
One application is in the plant care space through a partnership with Albuquerque agriculture technology startup Terra Vera. Instead of using its own disinfectant chemistry inside its machines, Ziomek said Terra Vera uses its own chemistry inside Build With Robots' robotics products.
Terra Vera, a past Inno Madness champion, uses a type of biomimicry chemistry to keep plants safe from biological diseases. Fitting its automated fogging technology to Terra Vera's particular application required a bit of custom engineering, Ziomek said. Its products are privately labeled for Terra Vera's customers, he added.
Dion's and Terra Vera are examples of how local partnerships have helped Build With Robots expand its applicable markets.
"We're a tech company at our core. We know automation, robotics, data science," Ziomek said. "We know less about the applications in janitorial markets. That's kind of where we've gone.
"So, we're pretty open-minded about, 'Hey, what do we not know, and is there a need here that we can fill with our technology?'"
Dekker Perich Sabbatini, an Albuquerque-based architecture firm, presents another partnership example. The firm has upwards of three dozen air quality monitoring sensors, called Breezy Sense, throughout its Journal Center headquarters, while also employing a few Breezy Blue units to disinfect larger conference rooms within the facility.
Another partnership Build With Robots has recently found, with a somewhat more standard application, is with Sandia Green Clean, a residential cleaning firm in Albuquerque. Build With Robots started working with Sandia Green Clean in mid-2023, offering a new service to its residential cleaning customers using the disinfectant robotics company's Breezy Blue products.
Working with Sandia Green Clean expanded nationally thanks to a program in collaboration with Profit Cleaners, an Albuquerque firm that helps other cleaning companies scale. Together, the businesses established a new subscription option for Build With Robots' products and developed different training and marketing materials for other cleaning companies wanting to use them, according to a March Build With Robots news release.
Build With Robots, Ziomek said, uses different partnerships — including those with Dion's, Terra Vera, Dekker Perich Sabbatini and Sandia Green Clean — to evaluate new market opportunities for its disinfectant and robotics products.
Are all those partnerships with various applications too much for Build With Robots, in terms of scaling its business? So far, no, Ziomek said — the company's "limiting factor" right now is its sales channel.
"But I do think at some point we'll have to make some hard decisions of are all these really profitable? Do all of these make sense?" he added. "Because you can't build a brand that's too many different things. People don't know who you are."
— Reporter Aayush Gupta contributed to this story.
