Designs on technology: Moorpark design firm rides homebuilding trend by using a computerized process that makes customizing houses more efficient.

Walk into one of the three Onsite Design showrooms and you will see the familiar trappings of an interior design company.

But the backbone of Moorpark-based Onsite Design lies with what a visitor cannot see--a proprietary technology that allows Onsite to manage what is often an unwieldy process of adding customized features to a new home.

Onsite Design is on the cutting edge of a quickly-growing trend in the homebuilding industry, computerization of the process that allows builders to manage everything from construction to billing at the push of a button.

"The faster we can communicate through technology and the faster we can build whatever we're building, we're able to protect profits," said Brad Ervans, a vice president with custom homebuilder Cypress Homes Inc. "Technology is really breaking through the industry at an amazing rate."

The company's focus on technology has helped Onsite Design to grow from a bootstrap business when it was founded in 1999 to a home design firm with revenues in excess of $20 million and some 45 employees, excluding the contractors it hires for each particular job.

Onsite, which currently operates in the Southern California region, has opened three design centers and plans to open one to two more such centers annually.

The company works this way: Homebuilders hire Onsite Design to provide a limited or full range of customized interior finishes to homebuyers. In some cases, the company only provides carpeting. In other cases, a homebuyer will purchase an upgrade package from the homebuilder that includes everything from flooring to countertops to appliances, which Onsite Design then provides.

Onsite Design provides the homebuyer with an interior designer to help select the furnishings for the home, and then manages all the other aspects, from securing installers to providing lenders with information on the additional funding needed and keeping the homebuilder abreast of what work is being done.

Coordinating and communicating with each of the groups involved in the process is done through proprietary software that allows each business involved to access data online in real time.

Unlike many small businesses that struggle for years to build a sales base, the challenge at Onsite Design was to develop the technology that is at the core of its service.

"We realized the (existing software) wasn't good enough, so we started developing our own," said Brad Rinehart, vice president, who co-founded the company with David Chesson, who is president, in 1999. "We dumped a lot of money into it, and we continue to develop a lot of back-office software. The back-office software has provided a huge competitive advantage."

Both Chesson and Rinehart had worked together at other flooring design companies in the past and had seen the industry change from providing basic floor coverings to providing a full range of customized furnishings.

"When the market started getting good, the builders were cashing in on profit," said Chesson. "The company we worked for, they weren't really state of the art. So I called Brad up and said, 'hey, we should do this on our own.'"

Complex process

Very large, publicly traded residential real estate companies often provide onsite design consultants to do this type of work. Smaller builders often do not have those resources, and they contract the work out.

But each new subcontractor on a building project adds a new layer of complexity to the project and another spoke that must be incorporated into the wheel of communication.

Onsite figured that if it could develop its own technology geared specifically to tying the process together and communicating with all of the companies, site supervisors and others that are involved in the construction of a new home, it could outshine the competition.

Launched during the heyday of the Internet bubble, Onsite executives hired consultants who could help develop the technology they needed and they raised some outside capital for their efforts.

The timing was right, and major players in the tech sector, including Sun Microsystems, Dell and Microsoft, were interested in working with the company with an eye toward developing the software into a business in its own right.

On their own

But when the technology bubble burst, the major tech companies lost interest and Onsite was left to develop the software on its own.

"We did a lot of studies on off-the-shelf products," said Chesson.

More recently, homebuilders are finding many more products to choose from. There are software applications for Blackberrys that can help builders coordinate work on a site with other offices and companies like Microsoft have begun introducing software geared to the building industry.

"We just got back from the builder's show," said Ervans at Cypress. "You'd be amazed at how many tech vendors were there. It's a huge need."

Onsite's software development efforts have helped the company to secure larger and larger contracts with more and more homebuilders.

Today, Onsite Design works with a range of builders including some of the largest--Pardee Homes, Standard Pacific Homes, Braemar Homes, New Millennium and Trimark Pacific Homes among others.

In addition to its showroom in Westlake Village, the company opened a showroom in Palm Desert in 2003 and one in Valencia last year.

Plans call for opening one to two more showrooms a year and expansion both regionally and eventually, nationally.

Spotlight

Onsite Design Inc.

Year Founded: 1999

Employees: 2000: 3

Employees: 2005: 45

Revenues: 2000: $3 million

Revenues: 2005: $20 million

Driving Force: Growth in the homebuilding industry and the increasing complexity of the business.

Goal: To expand the company's footprint regionally and eventually become national.