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 When Tyler and Elliott Edwards were grade schoolers living on a
small farm north of Colville, they started to learn the ins and outs of
the family computer.
The first and second of six children, Tyler
and Elliott pretended to start a company to make computer games. They
had heard of Microsoft Corp., so they gave their enterprise a similar
name with a pretend word: Hachisoft Corp. As it turns out, hachi isn’t pretend; in Japanese, it can mean eight, bowl or bee, depending upon how it’s used. And for seven years now, Hachisoft has been a very real enterprise. With their next-youngest brother Caleb also involved, the Edwardses operate Colville-based Hachisoft as a software-engineering company. It primarily offers consulting services but does make some of its own products—computer-assisted design enhancements rather than games, as originally planned. At ages 31, 29 and 27, respectively, all are software engineers. Each of them attended Whitworth University, and each earned a bachelor’s degree in software engineering. While they have different titles, they all do a little of everything for the company. “It makes us agile,” Elliott says. “And we don’t have the usual office politics because we’re family. We’re all in this together. We’ve got each other’s backs.” At this stage, nearly all of Hachisoft’s revenue comes from consulting, and almost 80 percent of the company’s consulting is for Itron Inc., the Liberty Lake-based maker of utility equipment, Tyler says. That percentage has decreased slightly during the past six to eight months, as Hachisoft has secured business with other companies. With the additional business, the company expects to double its volume of work this year compared with last year. That’s a big swing for a company that has one full-time software engineer and three temporary workers in addition to the three brothers. But the Edwardses say it’s a step in the right direction for a small concern that’s been trying to diversify its client base and product mix. The company is currently working to diversify while continuing to provide good service to its established clients. As it stands, Elliott says, “All resources are fully engaged.” Hachisoft falls into a business category referred to as rural outsourcing. Large companies outsource highly technical projects to companies like Hachisoft rather than hiring employees with highly technical skill sets. Rural outsourcing is similar to using offshore outsource contractors located abroad in countries like India. The Edwardses say Hachisoft can offer the same expertise as an offshore contractor, but it also can meet in person with clients and clients’ customers. Itron, for example, uses Hachisoft to expand its software’s features and functionality. The company works directly with Itron’s utility customers to help them incorporate Itron technology into the utilities’ internal systems. Mike Penberthy, Itron’s director of distribution design solutions, says, “We’re thrilled to have local access to the high-level expertise that Hachisoft offers. They’re local contractors that we can trust, and their proximity allows us to be more flexible in our resourcing needs.” Like many rural-outsource companies, Hachisoft is located in a small town where the costs of living and doing business are lower than they would be in a larger metropolitan area. The Edwardses say Colville, a city of about 5,000 people located 70 miles north of Spokane, has a few other software engineers who contract with companies in larger markets, but those are one- and two-person operations. Tyler says the consulting work is cyclical, by which he means that it has gone through some lean times in the past seven years. “Because we’re family, we can say that everybody takes pay cuts for the next two months, and it works,” Tyler says. “We don’t like it, but it works.” To offset the down cycles, Hachisoft has developed its own software line that includes three products, all of which are enhancement tools for computer-aided design. They include hsCADCompare, which allows a user to view, merge and compare CAD files; hsCADCreator, which is for creating CAD drawings; and hsCADView, for quick view and measurement of intricate CAD drawings. Hachisoft currently is marketing its software products passively since its pipeline of consulting work is full. If that work slows, the company will begin to market those products more aggressively, Elliott says. The company doesn’t have enough software sales to justify hiring a full-time person to market the products, but Tyler says he hopes to be able to do that in the future. Handling the growing consulting business while working to establish a software product line has been a bit of a balancing act, Tyler says. “We have one leg on one horse, and one leg on the other one,” he says. As the company grows, the three brothers concede that it will be a challenge to attract highly skilled employees to the small town. However, they say, they don’t have any plans to move the company to a larger market. “We’re close to family,” Caleb says. “And this is a nice place to live.” IBC
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