| There's almost nothing in the manufactured housing (AKA "mobile home", AKA "trailer" AKA "HUD-code home") industry. The industry experienced a severe contraction even before the Great Recession, declining in the 2000's from its most recent boom years of the 90's. In that earlier era, there were several vertical software companies selling Windows and DOS dealership management systems to the many independent (mom-and-pop) dealerships of manufactured homes By the time the industry started to recover in the last several years, they had all gone out of business. Because of the timing of the near-death of the MH industry, none of those companies even tried to move to web-based SaaS products. As far as I know, the only new dealership management (line of business) system for the industry is my own SaaS product, which I started selling a year ago. I'm a software developer, but my family owned a dealership for decades, so I know the business well. The industry is weird, and different enough from automobiles and motor homes that software for those (seemingly related) industries isn't really a good fit. I've had some success bootstrapping my business. The industry is big enough at this point that I can make pretty good money as a small player, but it's still small enough that it's unlikely to attract any big operators. The market is too small for them, I'm pretty sure. I think it would be difficult for someone who doesn't know the way things are done in the industry to create software for it. It's certainly possible, but for sure you'd have to partner with someone who has expertise already. But I guess that's true of almost any niche industry. |