Today seems like the last day of Partsearch Technologies. It looks like the staff has been let go and the company is going out of business. It is still kind of odd that I found myself wanting to write about it. After all I haven’t worked there since February 2007. In any event I have several friends that still worked there up until the end, and after spending so many years working there I feel like a wanted to write something.
For the past several weeks I’ve heard about problems they been having. Of course it seemed like (to me) there’ve been problems for years. In the end I have mixed feelings about this day. Partsearch was a place I loved to work at for many years, but toward the end for me it was a place I dreaded to work. At the time my decision to leave was both sudden, and a long time coming. What I mean by that is, by the time I was ready to leave I realized I should’ve left the year before. I talk about that now because it seems like the decisions that were being made then probably had an impact on the company’s ultimate demise.
In recent years I have had many negative things to say about working there. In reality as I said I had several years where I loved working there. I met many friends that I still keep in touch with today. I got to work side by side with one of my best friends for 2 years. I went from being just a systems engineer, to manager, then to a director. Today I can’t help thinking about all the fun times I had, but also about the frustration that led me to leave.
I talk about this now because in the end it seems like the company doomed due to its virtual reliance on one client. This wasn’t news. This was actually in fact a problem since the day the company was founded. Over time from what I’ve heard their reliance on Best Buy decreased, however at the end the vast majority of business was still from them. The detail that I have are fuzzy about the last days, but I recall talking to other managers years ago, and discussing the fact that in the end the business model just did not work. That and the companies reliance on one customer was worrisome from the get go. I’m not a finance guy, all my information is secondhand and anecdotal, but to me this seemed obvious. Let’s put it in an other way. If it was a great business model, Partsearch would not have relied on Best Buy for such a large percentage of revenue 10 years into the company’s history.
I can recall spending weeks and months preparing to build websites for customers that were to be the next big thing for Partsearch. The problem was the next big thing never came. It was always a bit demoralizing to spend all this time and money and effort on a website and never generated more than $5-$10,000 a month in revenue. This happened, more times than I can remember. At one point we had to have been managing 15 to 25 websites with 2 to 3 generating 90% or more of the money. One of those sites with the company’s own Partstore site. And from what I heard Partstore wouldn’t have gotten much focus if it wasn’t for Dan convincing upper management it could make money. Don’t get me wrong, the actual building and constructing the sites and infrastructure was challenging. That’s what I did. That is why I liked working there for so long. The frustrating part was to do it knowing that historically it wouldn’t make any difference.
I guess in the end my thoughts about working there a very bipolar. On one hand I got to work with some good friends. I gained new friends. I grew as an engineer and manager. I learned a lot more about technology than any other place I’ve ever worked. Gus for one still motivates me today even though I haven’t worked for him in over five years. All that positive thoughts get clouded when I think about the frustration of having to deal with Glenn and other upper management. In my mind the lack of understanding some aspects of technology, and being delusional in the fact that they thought they could build software better than they could just buy off the shelf that eventually led me to leave. I know you can argue anything I’m saying right now. However think about this, as far as I can remember the website infrastructure was rebuilt, or attempted to be rebuilt no less than four times in 10 years. In all those attempts (again as far as I am aware) it never worked just right. Today that still baffles me. In the end it was a e-commerce site, with the search engine backend, and fulfillment system. That’s nothing groundbreaking, yet there was so many problems with it.
What I find kind of funny is that I knew several people that worked there up until the end. Most of them are actually happy the companies out of business and they’re forced to look for something else.
When I was younger and jaded right after I left Partsearch I look forward to this day. Then it was almost like when it happened it would be justification. Now when the day is here, it is just sad. For everyone that I still know I was working there I wish them good luck finding a job. For those friends who had already moved on like myself, I say take a moment to think of the good times we all had. Because now that it is all over, all we have are the memories. When you count up the time that I was happy there outweighed the time I was unhappy!