First public release for Whitebox!
July 29, 2008
In February I wrote a post titled, ‘Whitebox Day 60 ~ Internal Release‘ where I indicated we had completed the majority of the code for our ACH collection system. Once we were able to show our software to the auto dealers, warranty company and agents it was apparent our software needed a major overhaul. Five months later and I am please to announce the code is substantially complete. Starting this week we will be rolling out Whitebox to several auto dealers in ‘beta’ (i.e. it will likely have a few bugs/problems/issues). So this application that we originally scoped for 60 days took more than 180 days to complete (and this is only the first version, we have at least one more major version I suspect).
What is Whitebox? The idea is to provide technology enabled finance and collection products to the automotive industry. Our customized solution provide warranty providers the ability to offer car dealers products such as new and used warranties, gap protection and after market to consumers who do not qualify for traditional finance products. Our ACH collection system, married to our state-of-the-art web interface and electronic signature collection technology create a seamless finance solution. Our software engineers work closely with our clients to customize our offerings to meet the specific needs of each product. By combining our robust banking interface and our hosted web application, car dealers are able to generate significant profits without extensive training and related overhead. (Oh and we don’t have any marketing people yet, so that is all you get)
Architel LP has provided Whitebox™ with $4.2MM in debt, until the company can secure a revolving debt line from a major bank. Whitebox uses approximately $6MM for every 1,000 contracts sold (i.e. monthly). For example, if the company sells 2,000 contracts per month it would have need of a $12MM revolving line. Whitebox should need outside debt in January or February 2009.
