About 18 months ago, we invested in a Boise-based company called Balihoo which has developed an insanely slick web-based local marketing automation solution. Their platform allows local affiliates of national franchises the ability to customize and fulfill all of the franchise’s creative materials across all mediums including in-store collateral, direct mail, email, television, radio, online, coupons, and more.

Continuing their success with other national franchises like Carpet One and Nobel Biocare, the company announced today that Quiznos, one of the nation’s largest and fastest growing quick service restaurant chains (and the first to toast all their sandwiches)  has selected Balihoo to deliver its solution to all of its 5000+ franchise owners nationwide. It’s been tremendously gratifying for me to watch Balihoo (which CEO Pete Gombert started while camping out in our conference room for a few months), grow into one of Boise’s most important and successful companies.

One of the things that has impressed me most about Pete and his management team is the amount of time they’ve spent listening to customers in developing a solution that their customers want, not what they think their customers need. Local affiliates want control over their marketing materials to fit their particular markets. Corporate marketing execs at national franchises want desperately to protect the brand integrity they’ve worked so hard to foster and maintain. Balihoo delivers a solution that speaks to both constintuents and that’s why they continue to have such significant customer wins…

Tags: Balihoo

This entry was posted on Monday, June 22nd, 2009 at 11:19 pm and is filed under Boise, Portfolio. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.