ECRM Promotes Mitchell Bowlus to President

ECRM has promoted CFO Mitchell Bowlus to president of the Cleveland-based company.

“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,” said Charlie Bowlus, CEO and founder. “Mitch joined me in starting ECRM after graduating No. 1 out of over 18,000 students at OSU. 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.”

Charlie Bowlus and son Mitch Bowlus started the company in 1993, holding their its event in 1994. “Mitch set up supplier payment terms which called for payment upon invoice 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,” said Charlie Bowlus.

As a result the company, with no cash in hand, was able to work on a positive cash flow as a new company and has maintained a record of steady growth, consistent profitability, no debt, and health cash flow ever since, according to the company.

“In 1994 there were a total of seven industry trade shows that included health and beauty care and a growing sense that the last thing the world needed was another one,” said Mitchell Bowlus. “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. 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.”

Technology has continued to be a key element of the ECRM business model and the company now markets software to its retailer and supplier.

Charlie Bowlus, will be transitioning to a greater focus upon software development as well as humanitarian initiatives.