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Will This Company Need a Passport? By John Van Horn


It is our policy at Parking Today not to do articles on com- panies that have no product in the field. We have always


thought that it was important that a product be proven, and past the “vaporware” stage before we talk about it in the magazine. Howev- er, in this case, we are making an exception. With so many startup companies in the wings, we thought it would be thought-provoking not to talk about a new product, but to describe the process one com- pany is going through to bring it to market. We met with Passport Parking’s founders in Atlanta last month, and in upcoming months we will follow them from their beginnings through their launch and first installations. Editor. Why another company supplying revenue control equip-


ment? There are already a baker’s dozen established, multina- tional organizations that supply hardware and software to the


parking industry. Do we really need another one? Charlie Youakim, his cousin Bob Youakim, and Khristian Gutierrez think so, and are committing time and treasure to find out. You bring a product to market to solve a problem. First, you


have to know what problem you are trying to solve. The Youakims and Gutierrez have done their research and found that parking facility owners and operators have a number of major challenges: • Due to heavy cost structures, companies sacrifice revenue


to reduce costs (wages as a percentage of industry revenue con- tinue to increase). • Companies prioritize cost reduction over driving produc-


tivity and organic growth. • Investment in the right parking solution is not often cost


Competitors Abound…My Opinion A number of companies are offering “pure


cloud” solutions and various companies offer “cen- tralized” control, reporting and monitoring of a cus- tomer’s location. Central Parking purchased, in September 2010,


Focus Point Parking, which ran a centralized park- ing control operation in Austin, and currently has more than 30 of its locations reporting back to a cen- tral office. Denison Parking in Indianapolis is running a


number of its systems from a central location. It uses two-way voice and CCTV to communicate with parkers in different locations. These centralized operations and others like


them (See this month’s article on the City of Santa Monica) are not totally cloud-based, but they have servers in each location, with control and communi- cations operations at the central location. One can


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sign on and ‘run’ the location from afar over the internet, but the computer activity resides in the local garage. A quick review of the major PARCS suppliers


finds that all are deep in R and D with cloud based products, some further along the process than others. It seems that the quotes in the article from PT (Raet- zsch and Pell) may be prescient. Although cloud based computing is used daily by virtually everyone on the internet (Amazon and eBay, for instance) these companies and others like them have invested hundreds of millions in R and D to make the processes work. It remains to be seen just how long it will take for


this business model to take hold and become perva- sive in our industry.


JVH Parking Today www.parkingtoday.com


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