In 2005, two college-buddy programmers named Jason and Tommy started a side business called Optimle Studios. With a focus on helping small businesses with computer services, their side-gig quickly turned into a full-time job as they expanded their offerings from basic IT services into custom programming and ecommerce development. With each successful project came bigger opportunities. By 2018, Optimle Studios was supporting enterprise development projects for everything from large government divisions like NASA, fortune 100 companies such as Honeywell, to $20M+ private sector eCommerce storefronts.

During this time, Jason had also started a boat dealership with another life-long friend in Cincinnati because of his passion for boating. Founded in 2008, this dealership grew quickly from a single-location, single-line store, to a multi-location dealership offering multiple lines. By 2018, this once small dealership had grown to a multi-location, award-winning dealership with over $20M in annual sales.

2018 became a pivotal year for the boat dealership. With the expanding growth, the dealership desperately needed software to help manage operations. Jason reached out to fellow dealership owners for advice and feedback on existing marine dealer management systems (DMS). The feedback he received was discouraging. No matter who he connected with; other dealerships hated whatever DMS they were using. Existing platforms were extremely dated, not cloud-based and overly complex for today’s environment. Dealers were frustrated, but just continued to use what they had because there simply was no alternative.

Jason became equally as frustrated after reviewing the existing platforms. He decided to convince Tommy that there was an enormous need for a cloud-based DMS that operated in todays fast-paced, marine dealership environment. With Jason and Tommy already discussing how to transition from a service business (selling hours) to a product business (selling a product), this became the perfect opportunity to mix rockstar, enterprise development expertise with Jason’s immense knowledge of growing and running a boat dealership for over 10 years. Within weeks they laid out a plan to start developing a system that would be mobile friendly, intuitive to use and cloud-based. Optimle Studios, a custom software development company, had become DealerRock.

DealerRock was built in stealth-mode for over 3 years by working side-by-side with a few select marine dealerships. Every function of the system was added after months of careful planning and development, working side-by-side with the marine dealership employees. Every area is thought out, functional and intuitive. Employees could access everything on the system from their mobile phones, technicians were operating from tablets and GMs could oversee operations from a hotel room.

Today, DealerRock is a modern, cloud-based, marine DMS software system that focuses on usability and mobility. The system eliminates the need for multiple systems within the dealership. This means no more using something for lead management, a different program for the service department and quoting sales through another system. Everything is integrated and connected within DealerRock – it’s one system for everything. New features and improvements are added weekly. Marine dealerships using DealerRock operate on the go, improve their operations immediately and actually enjoy working with their dealer management system.