Press Release - Starving Students CEO Bear Barnes Credits Company Success to Embracing Technology

Starving Students CEO Bear Barnes Credits Company Success to Embracing Technology

Los Angeles, June 13, 2007: Starving Students’ CEO Bear Barnes brought business leaders and budding entrepreneurs downtown to the Los Angeles Athletic Club, as a guest speaker at SCORE’s Business Legends Speaker Series on June 6. Bear shared the stage with Steven Riboli of the San Antonio Winery and together they shared the long histories of their L.A.-based companies. Bear also discussed how Starving Students has applied innovative technology to the traditional moving industry resulting in increased productivity and profit.

Starving Students has grown from two college students delivering flea market purchases in 1973 to a nationwide moving company that has completed 900,000 moves and counting. Today Starving Students operates 36 branches in nine states and moves over 1,000 families each week.

For 30 years Starving Students corporate office in Los Angeles managed its growing network of remote locations with phones and faxes. In 2004, the company installed terminal servers in each branch and wrote software to guide branch managers through the details of their day. The transition was difficult, and it required teaching new skills to company veterans, but the results have been remarkable. Communication and productivity have increased dramatically, and customers, movers and the company have all benefited.

Concurrently Starving Students saw the potential for what technology could do for its fleet of 300 trucks. The company installed GPS units in each of its trucks, enabling the company to keep track of where its teams and trucks were at any given time. Because the company charges by the hour, being able to bill accurately to the minute, and back up the billing with data, made a huge difference in customer satisfaction and increased the company’s bottom line.

Today Starving Students is working on eliminating the flow of paper from its branches to its corporate office via imaging software. Rather than receive 36 overnight packages stuffed with paperwork each week, managers now scan their paperwork into the system. The computer reads the document and attaches its image to the appropriate order. Upon completion, Starving Students looks forward to a roomier corporate office without filing cabinets.

By applying existing technology and forward management thinking, Starving Students is an example of how a company can generate above-market profits in a mature industry.


For more information about Starving Students, please contact Megan Long at (800) 506-0366 extension 255.