Laguna Hills-based application service provider Locate Inventory is growing with new office space, a new chief operating officer, and plans to double sales next year while also raising $5 million.
The company provides cloud-based inventory management software to midsize companies, defined by Chief Executive George Keliher as those with revenue of $5 million to $10 million on the low end of the spectrum, and more than $100 million on the high end.
“There’s a huge demand untapped” for the company’s offerings, he said.
The company introduced its beta software last year.
It recently brought on investor and Chief Operating Officer Ashley Richardson, and plans to raise $3 million to $5 million to support commercialization.
Keliher, who has more than 30 years of experience in inventory management, said that when it comes to the industry, companies fall either into the camp of QuickBooks, an accounting software package developed and marketed by Intuit Inc. (Nasdaq: INTU), or enterprise software from the likes of Oracle Corp. (NYSE: ORCL) and SAP SE.
The problem, he said, is there’s no midrange software that can serve the need of a fast-growing company, which is less expensive than larger enterprise models.
Keliher took the matter into his own hands and transitioned his company from a consulting firm to a tech company. He hired a group of young developers to create Locate, “the premier cloud-based inventory management solution,” he said.
It can be simplified to work for a single warehouse processing only a few orders a day or a business with multiple warehouses processing hundreds of orders to distributors, as well as online and in-store retail customers. It provides inventory and workflow management, mobile inventory scanning and accounting features.
Incorporating accounting is unique—Keliher said Locate totals and summarizes orders and shipping records on a daily basis, thereby avoiding accounting database overflow.
The company has grown from sales of $19,000 per month early this year to more than $50,000 per month.
Keliher said he anticipates doubling sales next year.
“It’s all word of mouth. We are selling more users to people and have 100% retention … that’s why I became an investor,” Richardson said. The company retail its software based on the number of users in the company.
The company plans to continue to integrate with other software. Its current list of integrations includes Quickbooks, UPS, Taxify, Magento, Shopify and Stripe.
It recently moved from San Juan Capistrano to a new 2,400-square-foot headquarters in Laguna Hills three times the amount of space it had before, Keliher said.
It currently employs eight and plans to hire additional sales and customer support personnel after the fundraising.
