Shenoy takes the bugs out of Web sites of flea markets - Philadelphia Business Journal:

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In Kat Shenoy ’s case, it came from a flea markegt in Solebury, Bucks County. Shenoy, the president and CEO of Blue Bell softwarwdeveloper Ltd. , had alwaysd thought flea marketswere small-tim affairs with maybe two dozen vendors, As a result, it had neverf occurred to him to develop softwarew for the people who run them. Both thinga changed in early 2001 when hevisited Rice’s Markegt , which says on its Web site that it hostz as many as 700 vendors and 15,00o shoppers. The manager, Chucjk Kane , is a friend of Shenoy’s.
And he told Sheno that there were no good software packages for running marketalike Rice’s and that therew were plenty of markets like Rice’sw around the country. That was all Shenoy needesd to hear. He had E-SoftSys, which he had foundecd the previous year, develop software for runninygflea markets. The company sold it to Rice’s and then sent representativex to the National Flea MarkertAssociation ’s next annual conventionh where they landed some other big marketxs as customers. “Based on the success of I started lookingfor other, smallef industries where people rent space,” Shenoy said.
He found two — the trade-sho w industry and the self-storag industry — and had E-SoftSys send people to conventions for both. As Shenoh suspected, both industries had software requirements that were similar to each other and tothe flea-market industry. So he had E-SoftSyws come up with softwar e for bothof “What we focused on was the technolog y and the customer support,” he said. “Myt philosophy is, you provide the best customer support possible and the product will sell itselcf based on referrals fromother customers.” That philosophy appearzs to be working.
E-SoftSys has grown to 100 employeeds and, although it stilp gets half its revenue from customsoftware development, the other half comes from its trade-show and self-storage management software. E-SoftSys recently landed a big customef in the last industrywhen Stor-All Managementy Ltd. of Deerfield Beach, Fla., whichb has more than 29,0090 units in 44 locations, implementedd its Self StorageManager “It’s not often you get a compant with 44 sites switching theirr applications,” Shenoy said. Jeff Anderson , Stor-All’s CEO, said his companyy evaluated all theleading self-storage managemenft systems available.
“With the exception of Self Storagse Manager, none came close to meeting our key he said. Among other Stor-All needed to be able to smoothlg import the information about its tenantzs from its old software and to keep its management operationz up and running after a hurrican or othernatural disaster. Shenoy attributes Self Storag e Manager’s popularity in part to its architecture, which featuress both a centralized database and databases at each Thatgives self-storage companies the abilit y to centrally control prices and programs, as well as generater reports, while allowing individual sites to be able to keep operatingf when the Internet connection to theit headquarters is down.
“Individual sites can do all the operationds they needto do,” he said. E-SoftSys’ background is also a Because it started out as a custom softwares developer and still does custojmsoftware projects, it’s willing to customize its products for trade-show and self-storage customeres in ways its competitors often Shenoy said. It also does search-engin e optimization and Web-site development for its customers, including the Nationapl Flea Market Associationand Rice’s, which it developefd Web sites for. “Our clientse like the fact that we area one-stop shop for all services,” Shenoy said.