Built for the dealers the big vendors ignore.

The story behind HelmDMS

Talking to marine dealers, the same line came up again and again: "I've talked to more vendors than I can count. Every one of them sells the same software dressed up different. Nobody's actually built what a boat shop needs."

So I started spending time at boat shops. Watching what the day actually looks like.

Front desks taking call after call, walking back to the service bay every few minutes to ask "is the boat ready?" Cashiers typing the wrong total into the credit card machine, voiding it, starting over. Parts counters calling three distributors to find one part, then forgetting which one was cheapest. Stacks of sticky notes on the monitor — every one of them a workaround for something the DMS couldn't do.

Then I went home and started building the software boat shops actually need.

Who we are

Hughes Technology is a US-based software shop. We build SaaS products for industries that the venture-funded world doesn't want to touch. Real businesses. Real workflows. Real people who pick up the phone when you call.

HelmDMS is our marine dealer management system. We built it on a modern stack (web-based, mobile-friendly, cloud-hosted, multi-tenant from day one) with the goals of:

• Replacing the old "Blackpurl + Kenect + spreadsheets" stack with one tool that does the whole job.
• Beating the legacy DMS on price and on UX.
• Being a system the front-desk staff, the techs in the bay, and the owner in the back office all want to use.

What we believe

You own your data. If you ever want to leave, we'll export everything for you — no fee, no friction. We don't believe in DMS hostage situations.

Software should make work easier, not harder. Every feature we ship is judged by one test: does it cut clicks for the people on the shop floor? If not, we don't ship it.

Pricing should be honest. $499/mo, flat. No per-seat tax. No "premium" tier. No "call sales for a quote." If our price ever changes for new dealers, founding dealers stay locked in at $499 forever.

You should talk to a human. No offshore ticket queue. No "we'll get back to you in 3-5 business days." When you email us, you get a person — usually the person who built the feature you're asking about.

Where we're going

We're starting with marine dealers because that's where we found the deepest pain. Once we've got 25 founding dealers happily running their shops on HelmDMS, we'll expand into adjacent industries that have the same DMS problem — powersports, RV, outdoor power equipment.

But first, we're going to do marine right.

Want to talk?

Email hello@helmdms.com, call (270) 807-1000, or request a demo. We'll show you the software and answer any question you've got — including the hard ones.

— Blake Hughes, founder, Hughes Technology