By Rob Lewis

In 2005 friends and fellow Silicon Valley interns Stephen Fung and Louis Leung received a consultancy project to build a custom-made inventory system for a corporate client.

So they founded Archon Systems and got to work. They quickly realized that their clientbase would opt for packaged software if there was anything suitable on the market. The software choices were either too complicated and expensive, or just not powerful enough to meet their customers needs, so Archon set out to solve the problem themselves.

In 2007 they released inFlow Inventory – an inventory management software designed for small to mid-sized businesses.

inFlow helps people save time on paperwork, fulfill customer needs accurately, and free up cash held in excess inventory. inFlow tracks inventory, customer orders, and purchase orders, and can help with generating reports and reordering stock. It allows multiple computers to be connected so everyone can work together.

In the five years since inFlow has grown to become the most heavily downloaded inventory software for small to mid-sized businesses and ranks #1 on Google for “inventory software”.

inFlow now has over 350,000 small business users in over 60 countries and countless industries, including retail, wholesale, manufacturing, e-commerce, professional services, and healthcare. inFlow is even being used in medical clinics, casinos, aviation schools, and to track virtual items in an online game.

inFlow subscribes to the freemium business model, offering three editions: Free, Regular ($299), and Premium ($499). The licensing of Regular and Premium editions is a one-time cost and is per-computer.

So how did they manage to grow their client base so quickly? According to Archon’s Matt Kostanecki, the exact opposite way of their inventory software competitors. They have no sales people and treat their software as designer grade without the designer price tag.

Reposted from Techvibes Media.