With new building, national recognition, Dakota Digital marks milestone year

More than 140,000 people packed a trade show in early November for the automotive aftermarket industry – where a Sioux Falls company proved its success is anything but under the radar.

Dakota Digital, which started in founder Ross Ortman’s house in 1986, took home two wins and two runner-up awards from the Specialty Equipment Market Association’s annual event, the SEMA Show, the largest trade show hosted in Las Vegas.

“SEMA can’t recall a single company taking home as many awards in a single year,” Ortman said. “To get any awards at all at that show is huge because it’s the biggest in the United States, so any mention is big – but this is just a massive home run for the year.”

The new hardware caps a memorable 2024 for Dakota Digital, which earlier in the year moved into a new 40,000-square-foot expanded space at its headquarters in northwest Sioux Falls.

About 70 team members are working there, along with 75 in an adjacent building.

“We’ve got good additional expansion capacity for office and production space, but the warehouse is filling in quick,” Ortman said.

“We’re bringing many processes back in house that we had to farm out before because we didn’t have the space either for the processes or the people behind them, so now we’re getting back to being as vertically integrated as we used to be.”

Dakota Digital has become the industry’s leading manufacturer of aftermarket gauges for hot rods, muscle cars, street rods and trucks. It also has a full line of gauges for Harley-Davidson motorcycles.

Its recent award-winning products include Velocity Commander Cruise Control, which won Best Engineered Product from SEMA.

“It’s a cruise control product designed especially for the hot rod market,” Ortman said.

“It has all the bells and whistles, Bluetooth integration and great troubleshooting options. It’s a significant improvement over what’s on the market, and we’re starting production this month to begin shipping it before the end of the year.”

The company’s MLX-5000 Universal Motorcycle Gauge System took home the SEMA award for Best New Powersports Product.

“We introduced that instrument cluster specifically for the Harley-Davidson industry, and it’s been shipping for four or five months now,” Ortman said. “R&D is a strong area for us. A lot of our engineers love the industry we work in.”

An original tenant for the Sioux Falls Development Foundation’s Park VII, Dakota Digital was a driving force behind the development park when it opened there in 2003.

“We knew they had an incredibly promising business and wanted to do what we could to support them,” said Dean Dziedzic, vice president of economic development for the Sioux Falls Development Foundation.

“It’s been rewarding to watch their growth. The innovation and workforce opportunities that they’re bringing to the market are exactly what we’re looking for in advanced manufacturing employers.”

The Development Foundation “has been incredible to work with,” Ortman added. “They were accepting of opening this park sooner than they planned because they knew we wanted to move in, and over the years, they’ve been phenomenal as we’ve shown plans for our new development.”

Dakota Digital’s new building allows it to double its footprint, bringing a modern feel to the showroom with a lot of glass and natural light incorporated into the design.

“Now that we have this nice, new space, we’re also planning to do some remodeling on our original building to bring it up to the same standards,” Ortman said.

The original building at 4510 W. 61st St. N., will house administrative offices, raw inventory, the machine shop, wire and cable assembly, and instrumentation faceplate printing and lasering.

The new building at 4720 W. 61st St. N. includes the showroom, sales offices, tech support staff, electronic subassembly, final assembly lines, finished inventory and shipping.

“It’s great having production flexibility under one roof,” Ortman said. “We have a very high-mix production environment and being able to be nimble with our production lines is critical. Being able to turn on a dime based on customer demand has been paramount.”

The company also is constructing a 60,000-square-foot building to the north that can be divided into 20,000-square-foot bays for lease.

“We see these as light industrial or warehouse – someone who wants a showroom because it faces toward Walmart,” Ortman said.

Footings and foundations are in, and vertical construction recently started.

“It’s moving along, and they’re hoping to have it completed by the middle of the year next year,” Ortman said. “Interest is good, but anyone who needs something needs it sooner, so we’ll have a shell ready, and we may also build out a space that’s fully move-in ready.”

The space is listed with Bender Commercial Real Estate Services.

Dakota Digital employees are loving the new space, Ortman added.

“We’re just thrilled with how everything turned out,” he said. “We plan to add 10 to 20 people now that we have the room and can bring everything back in house.”

In addition to supporting Forward Sioux Falls and its workforce development initiatives, the company also has worked closely with Southeast Technical College and the CTE Academy to introduce college-age and high school students to its opportunities.

“We’ve done tours to get kids interested early on and let them know what’s available in the industry,” Ortman said.

“The workforce development programs through Forward Sioux Falls and the Development Foundation help us meet today’s needs while Southeast Technical College and the CTE Academy help establish the momentum needed for our next generation of workforce.”

The growth of the business supports the need to continually invest in expanding the team.

“In our world, we have to work harder to stay in the lead, but we’ve always have a good profile in the industry, and the hot rod world is such a hobbyist industry that it tends to avoid the peaks and valleys of the economy,” he said.

Looking back, though, the past five years have been especially strong – with throughput doubling since 2019.

“You don’t always realize it’s happening at that pace as you’re gaining more and more momentum every year,” Ortman said. “We’ve developed a great team over the years, getting all the right people in the right places. That’s allowed us to maintain this growth without completely breaking the system.”

To learn more and connect with opportunities at Dakota Digital, click here.

Forward Sioux Falls is a joint venture between the Greater Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce and the Sioux Falls Development Foundation and is widely respected as the premier economic driver for the Sioux Falls region. To learn more and connect, click here.