A San Luis Obispo cloud-based technology firm marked its recent expansion to Santa Maria with a ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday morning.

Surrounded by employees, supporters and local economic development officials MINDBODY co-founder and CEO Rick Stollmeyer officially opened his company’s Santa Maria location at 2811 Airpark Drive in Santa Maria.

MINDBODY creates cloud-based business management software for the health, wellness and beauty services industry, and serves about 35 million consumers in more than 130 countries worldwide.

Stollmeyer came to the Central Coast to work supporting rocket launch activities at Vandenberg Air Force Base. He and his family settled in the San Luis Obispo area and he commuted to work every day. On Thursday, he said a desire to start his own business and not have such a long commute helped him find the inspiration to create MINDBODY.

A similar desire to create a better work-life balance led him to open a new facility in Santa Maria.

“We started talking to commercial building owners a year and a half, two years ago, looking at different places. We wanted to find a work environment for our team members that felt MINDBODY-esque,” Stollmeyer said. “We can build our global operation here and San Luis Obispo and give our team the best possible work environment.”

The decision to expand to Santa Maria was an easy one for MINDBODY, Stollmeyer said.

“We weren’t actively recruiting in Santa Maria. It was just happening. We were posting jobs in San Luis Obispo and the people were finding us. Now we are posting jobs in Santa Maria and the response has been fantastic. We are seeing some really high quality people. We expect to keep expanding here. Our business is growing very fast,” Stollmeyer said.