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CLEVELAND — Mitchell Bowlus, chief financial officer at ECRM, has been appointed president at retail and consumer product manufacturer solution provider.
The company, which holds events and markets software to leading retailers and suppliers, said Thursday that founder and chief executive officer Charlie Bowlus will be transitioning to a greater focus on software development and humanitarian initiatives.
"Mitch has been instrumental in developing our business model and strategies as well as our strong financial foundation and is uniquely positioned to take us to the next level as president," Charlie Bowlus said in a statement.
"Mitch joined me in starting ECRM after graduating No. 1 out of over 18,000 students at OSU [Ohio State University]," he added. "He was recruited by the business schools at Harvard, Wharton, Yale, MIT and others but decided to pursue his passion to help streamline business process for companies all over the world.”
They started the company in 1993 and held their first show the next year. "Mitch set up supplier payment terms that called for payment upon invoice," Charlie Bowlus stated. "So all payments were due to the company prior to the event, and he negotiated contracts with hotels that called for payment days after the event."
As a result, ECRM was able to work on a positive cash flow as a new company and has maintained steady growth and profitability, the company said.
Mitch Bowlus recalled that in 1994, there were seven industry trade shows that included health and beauty care and "a growing sense that the last thing the world needed was another one."
"We had no intention of being a trade show but rather a new way for retailers and manufacturers to streamline how they planned for new items and promotions," he commented. "We designed software that would enable the supplier to input product data one time into a central data store, which also included each retailer’s new item and promotional item forms. This key piece of software was critical to saving the buyers and suppliers time and eliminating redundancy in their process and saving time and money."
