Visual Victory

When she retired three years ago, software developer Bobbie Ayers envisioned lazy afternoons lounging under a beach umbrella.

But not even the promise of paradise can shut down an entrepreneurial spirit — not when a revolutionary business idea strikes.

“I dusted off the entire business concept, turned my mind off from golf and decided to go back into business,” says Ayers, CEO of Sarasota-based VisApp, a company that creates online home makeover tools.

Diving back into the market was one of the most difficult decisions Ayers has ever made.

When she left her retail buying job and began developing software in 1990, Ayers was a single mother who acted out CEO and CFO role-playing games with her young children at the dinner table.

Now, Ayers was married. The children were in college.

“I asked, 'Do I have it in me to start this again?'' she says. “And if I do, it's a completely different business model.”

Ayers first delved into visualization software after watching her sister-in-law, Melody, tack wallpaper after wallpaper to a son's bedroom wall, only to tear it back down. She realized homeowners could save time, money — and stress — if they could visualize renovations before hitting the home improvement store.

“It doesn't make any difference if it's a mobile home or a multimillion dollar house,” Ayers says. “Everyone is doing something to their home.”

Ayers created nine CD-ROM products she pitched to publishers who boxed them while Ayers collected the royalties. The tools, available in some 40,000 retail stores nationwide, have racked up nearly 950,000 registrations since hitting the market, Ayers says.

She was stunned to discover that 20 years later, visualization software still was only available as CD-ROM. No one had created an online platform.

And the construction halt proved to be a boon, not a burden.

“Every single contractor was looking for leads,” Ayers says. “They don't have people calling them like they did when the world was perfect.”

On ShowOff.com, consumers upload photos of their homes and landscaping and redesign virtually, using product images from contractors in their area. Service providers — 400 of them registered so far — purchase leads ranging from $5 to $50.

To create the site, Ayers hired young gamers with admittedly little experience. They work from home, some offshore, often doing their best work in the wee hours of the morning, Ayers says.

“Instead of going with programmers I knew could do the work perfectly, I felt I needed to find the ones that had the creativity,” says Ayers, who four years ago also created a hair visualization tool after her mother lost her battle with ovarian cancer.

VisApp has 10 employees with plans to double in the next year, and Ayers says she plans to build to a staff of 60 within five years. She declines to disclose revenues, but says she's still putting a bit of her own capital into the startup.

Nearly 40,000 homeowners have created accounts and have viewed 1.2 million products on ShowOff.com in the last 60 days. About 18% who visit the site register. Of those, half upload photos and create home projects.

VisApp now is testing a program for real estate agents to help clients picture a property's potential.

With more service providers looking to buy leads than it can keep up with, VisApp created a lead-generation widget professionals can post to their own websites. One roofer, Ayers says, has installed the widget on 10 WordPress sites and is getting about 125 leads per month.

In March, VisApp was named best site for lead generation at the 2012 BizTech Innovation Summit in Tampa. The following month, it won in the cloud-computing category during DEMO Spring 2012, a Silicon Valley conference that draws venture capitalists.

And ShowOff.com even is receiving international hits, from users in Canada, Australia, Italy and beyond.

“Even though the products don't work in their countries, they still visualize and use these accounts,” says Ayers, who hopes to develop software for international service providers in the future. “It really is global.”

— Lindsay Downey | Contributing Writer