This week we shine the spotlight on Bloomforth. The company, founded by CEO Quy Vo, has 16 employees and is still a new startup, just 4 months old. Its ambitious goal is to create small business cloud software that handles newsletters, point-of-sale, inventory management, appointment booking, and employee time keeping. Here are more details.
WHAT IS THE BUSINESS KNOWN FOR: Small business cloud services all in one bundle.
Ask Founder and CEO Vo (pictured third from left, back row above) what he thinks sets his company apart. He’ll tell you it’s that, while a lot of providers sell software applications to small businesses out there, Bloomforth innovates by bundling it all together:
“For each of our applications (i.e. point of sale, inventory management, employee management, e-newsletters) there are many competitors on the market and each one with a separate monthly/yearly fee. So if you own a small business, you end up paying many different companies to have each application you need and that gets expensive fast.”
Bloomforth offers just three versions of its service, the first one free. The two paid services offer a single monthly rate for everything based on your company’s size.
WHAT INSPIRED THE BUSINESS STARTUP: A desire to supply small businesses with better tools.
In his previous job, Vo had seen how small businesses often struggled with little or no technology because of the expense involved. In particular, he said their lack of analytics put many small businesses at risk of failure since they had no data to figure out what customers wanted. First, Vo started Torchlight, a company created to provide small businesses with analytics and marketing research. But he found little interest.
“That’s when I came up with the idea for Bloomforth. I could make technology for small businesses to use and include the analytics as part of the inventory system! This way small business owners could manage their daily operations better and still get the necessary analytics to stay on top of their business.”
BIGGEST RISK: So far, getting this thing started.
Vo himself has taken a big personal risk putting a considerable amount of his own money into the venture to get it up and running.
IF THIS BUSINESS WERE A BOOK, WHAT WOULD IT BE: One of the “Harry Potter” books by J.K. Rowling:
“Because we are the wizards of small business software.”
FAVORITE QUOTE: “Be the change you want to see in the World” – Mahatma Ghandi
FUN TIDBIT: Vo says the best thing about Bloomforth is the environment at the company which he defines as “work hard, play hard.” Certainly the work hard part isn’t difficult to figure out. As far as play, well…employees enjoy plenty of distractions to their work week. Take the regular movie days or bring your pet to work day. There are also two vintage arcade games in the break room and a PS4.
FAVORITE TEAM FOOD: Another perk of working at Bloomforth is the company provides lunch for employees. Says Vo:
“We’ve eaten everything from pork chops to kale salad.”
He maintains his team (pictured above) has a partiality to Vietnamese fried rice.
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