FORT MYERS, Fla., Dec. 15, 2008 — Once online shoppers click "Add to Cart," they may not think much about how their purchase arrives on their doorstep.
A Fort Myers-based company thinks of nothing else, and with online sales spiking 15 percent to an estimated $846 million on "Cyber Monday," they've got plenty of work to do.
Online Management Systems (http://www.omsonline.net) provides a complete eCommerce business solution and storefront system with shopping cart software, credit card processing, inventory controls, warehousing services, customer service and shipping services to clients worldwide, President and co-founder Barry Shepherd said.
"E-Commerce is just huge and it is growing exponentially year after year," Shepherd said. "Our business has doubled from last year and we expect to double again next year."
Shepherd and co-founder Praveen Vemulapalli, the chief information officer, met in the late '90s while creating an online trial verdict database for the state of Texas. They created their own company and came to Fort Myers in 2003.
The company serves small retailers, such as the Southern Thread clothing company, up to a Fortune 500 company, Lockheed Martin. It works with non-profits, such as the U.N. Foundation's NothingButNets campaign for mosquito bed-nets in Africa.
"We do the ugly business while our clients are out promoting and selling their products," Shepherd said. "Our side of the business is the part that people never see."
You won't see it in Fort Myers, either, unless you know where to look. The company's headquarters and 18 managers, programmers and support staff are in a small, unmarked office off College Parkway. The rest of the company's 59 employees are in other locations, including a 400,000-square-foot warehouse outside of Dallas, filled with its clients' products.
"Dallas is perfect because we can have two-day shipping to both coasts," Shepherd said.
That shipping convenience attracted Kolbus America, which sells book-binding equipment to printers, said Gene Cain, director of customer services for Kolbus.
"They could ship faster from Dallas than we could," Cain said.
Cain said OMS also provides outstanding service to Kolbus customers.
"They put together a team that works with our product line and if a client calls at 2 a.m. with an emergency because they need a part, they can help them," Cain said. "It is as if they were talking to my own customer service team."
Shepherd said the business-to-business online segment is growing even faster than direct-to-consumer sales.
"Companies are deciding it may not be worth it to hire someone to take fax or phone orders when it can be done online," he said.
In addition, by hiring his company, clients are sharing the cost of warehouse space, forklifts and operators and so on. That typically amounts to a savings of about 40 percent, Shepherd said.
"We don't even have a sales team because we have gotten all of our business through word-of-mouth and referrals," he said. "I don't think we have even begun to tap the market of people buying online."
Press Contact:
Stephen Lane
239-935-5597
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