Martin S.F. Weathers the Storm

Last spring, when the Bay Area was flush with dot-com clients, agencies from far and wide were renting office space here. It wasn’t long, of course, before many of them found themselves without much work to do.

The Martin Agency, based in Richmond, Va., has managed to largely sidestep those troubles, however. The shop opened a West Coast office shortly before the e-commerce collapse, but had been planning to head west for some time—something agency brass say is the major reason the office is still thriving.