Matthew Wegener, Founder and CEO of ISoft Data Systems, standing in front of a section of remodel in the Turbine Flats Project, where his company is located. Photo by Kate Ellingson.
While studying electrical engineering at The University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Matthew Wegener had a part-time job at a salvage yard where he worked on cars and poured concrete. During his time there, Wegener realized the salvage yard needed an inventory management system. He made a proposal to build the system for them on evenings and weekends. “Literally it was just a card table in a salvage yard,” Wegener said, “but that was the start of ISoft.”
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When he was a sophomore, Wegener dropped out of college to pursue his venture full time and eventually left the salvage yard. “I got married in October 1997,” he said. “When we came back from our honeymoon, I quit my job as a bit of a surprise to my wife.” After Wegener quit working for the salvage yard, he started raising money from family and friends and moved into an office on 56th and O Street in Lincoln.
ISoft, which has grown from those humble beginnings to employ 15 people today, provides inventory management software and custom website design with a focus on the salvage industry for heavy truck, automotive, motorcycle, ATV and agricultural vehicle enterprises. Wegener’s company started the website heavytruckparts.net (left: screenshot), which Wegener says is the only ecommerce site for used heavy truck parts. “There is definitely some value in walking through the process of identifying who your market is,” Wegener said, “identifying what your price point is going to be and will people actually pay that as you’re going through a business plan session.”
In 2000, Wegener’s company raised $350,000 to take the aggregated inventory and build an ecommerce system. The company built the beginnings of an ecommerce system but couldn’t raise follow-on funds at the time because of the dot-com bubble bursting. Wegener says that forced the company to fall back on its core strengths. They focused on their primary product of inventory management systems and then built them up into more scalable technologies. Wegener says that during 2001-2007, they re-developed their inventory management software, focused on existing customers and stabilized their revenue stream.
A few of the ISoft Data Systems employees. Photo by Kate Ellingson.
Fast forward to 2011, and Wegener says the site has almost $200 million worth of inventory, 86,000 visitors a month and close to two million searches per year for parts. Just five months ago they introduced ecommerce without raising follow-on funds. Today, ISoft is located on Y Street in Lincoln, part of the Turbine Flats Project.
Wegener always wanted to be an entrepreneur, and one of the earliest jobs he can remember is repairing Nintendos in junior high. Over the years, he has learned the value of planning in entrepreneurship. “Really spend the time and effort building it up from the bottom because there’s no point in doing it if you can map it out and it’s not going to work,” Wegener said. “You should take a step back and approach a different industry or different product or figure out a different way to position what you were thinking you were going to sell.”
