The scene is familiar to me, having worked in high tech businesses throughout the dot-com boom (and bust) – large open spaces, dim lights, table tennis matches, commuter bicycles, and lots of fingers coding.
This time, though, the scene is being played out in downtown Olympia by MerchantOS – a company that has built a solid foundation on what they know – creating tools for business owners.
Company Story
MerchantOS began nine years ago as the brainchild of Justin Laing and Ivan Stanojevic. Justin and Ivan met in San Jose, California when their respective girlfriends (now wives) were dorm mates. Ivan worked at a bike shop and started applying his Information Systems skills to creating an application to track inventory and sales for the shop.
Ivan shared his application with Justin who had the vision to take it into the cloud.
In 2004, the duo officially founded the company and signed up their first customer – Slough’s Bike Shoppe who, over the next six months, provided valuable feedback to make the software easier and more user friendly.
After fine-tuning the software, the next step was to attend Interbike, the bike industry’s leading annual trade show. “We figured we’d sign up 50 to 100 customers,” said Laing. They signed up one customer. But, that slow growth would not last long.
MerchantOS Today
Justin moved to Olympia when his wife enrolled at The Evergreen State College. Ivan commutes about one week a month from California, preferring a few more days of sunshine than Washington can offer.
Now employing 20 people and serving around 1800 customers, MerchantOS exploded, it has grown by 75% every year.
MerchantOS has expanded into other small specialty categories such as toy stores, hobby shops, pet supply retailers, and apparel and outdoor stores.
“Bike shops still represent a large part of our business,” explains COO Luke Bowerman who joined MerchantOS about two years ago. “We figured out quickly that with only 5,000 bike shops nationwide, to meet our growth goals, we needed to move into other industries.”
Wagners European Bakery and Cafe, Sweet Charley B’s Cupcakery, and Joy Ride Bicycle Shop are local MerchantOS customers.
Customer Service Key
Bowerman is quick to note that MerchantOS has no sales force. While they buy Google key words to generate leads, the majority of their new business comes from word-of-mouth referrals.
A potential customer receives a free trial period during which they are granted unlimited access to MerchantOS’s outstanding customer service team. “50% of our team is dedicated to supporting customers,” explains Bowerman. “The experience of talking to our support team is the sales process.”
“We hire our support team based on personality. It’s a great reason to operate a business in Olympia – we can always find interesting people that have the technical skills plus a sense of humor and ability to show empathy with our customers,” adds Bowerman.
Software Manages Inventory
MerchantOS thinks of their point of sale and inventory management software as a piece of the sales process – moving inventory out the door. “The tool does such a good job telling you what you should buy more of or put on sale that it’s improving your business,” says Bowerman.
Streamlined tools such as easy inventory tracking, real-time reports, and integrated vendor catalogs coupled with incredible customer support makes running a retail outlet with MerchantOS software much simpler. Add web based point of sale features and all customer data stored “in the cloud.”
“The goal of our product is to show a business owner that it would cost more not to use us than it does to use us,” adds Bowerman who comments on the time and effort saved by utilizing their software tools.
“If we do our jobs right, then our customers make more money,” summarizes Bowerman.
More information about MerchantOS can be found on their website.
