We build software we have to live with.
We design embedded systems for machines, so we trade industrial automation gear and run our own warehouse, and we serve our customers from it. Every tool we sell was built for our own operation first. Rainforge is the software studio behind that operation.
The parts are servo drives, PLC modules and EtherCAT terminals from factories that closed or sold off a line. Each one waits in a numbered box on our shelves until an engineer somewhere needs that exact part number. Getting it listed and out of the door used to mean typing: part numbers off grimy nameplates, addresses into carrier websites, customs text and invoices by hand.
So we wrote the software. ICE reads the nameplate from a phone photo and drafts the eBay listing. Invent is our order desk: orders, packing, carriers, customs, invoices and the warehouse itself, on screens that work on a phone at the packing bench. We use both every morning. When something gets in our way at the bench, it is often fixed by the afternoon.
We also built Iron Rainbow, a nationwide powder-coating marketplace with a 3D customizer, and Rainbow Flex, the shop software its coating shops run on, plus a CRM that finds coating shops across the country. For an antiquarian bookseller we built Kakapo, a web shop and a tool that turns old scans into new print and ebook editions.
Most of what we build we also run, on our own servers with our own monitoring and backups. Now we build the same kind of systems for other businesses, from a nine-page website that makes the phone ring to a whole platform.
Tell us what’s slowing you down.
Thirty minutes, one call. You describe the work that eats your week; we tell you what we would build, how long it takes and what it costs. Even if the answer is “you don’t need us”.