Ewen Dobbie, president of the Dowco Group, a Canadian firm that has purchased FabTrol, plans to keep the headquarters in Eugene.

A local couple announced Friday that they’ve sold their Eugene software company, FabTrol Systems, to a privately held Canadian firm.

Douglas and Gerry Cochrane, who built FabTrol from a garage start-up to a global player in the steel fabrication industry over the past 20 years, sold to the Dowco Group, a company in British Columbia that serves the design and construction industries. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

By Sherri Buri McDonald, The Register-Guard
Published: September 6, 2008 12:00AM

Photo by Chris Pietsch/The Register-Guard

Douglas Cochrane, 61, wrote the initial program that launched FabTrol in the early ’80s. His wife, Gerry Cochrane, 59, built the sales and support infrastructure that serves more than 1,050 customers in 22 countries.

Douglas Cochrane said the decision to sell was difficult, but necessary, “in order for the company to live beyond a single generation.”

The Cochranes said they look forward to watching the company they built grow under Dowco’s ownership.

Dowco President Ewen Dobbie said FabTrol will complement the group’s other businesses in the design and construction industries, and that he plans to expand FabTrol’s international presence, especially in the developing economies of India, China and the Middle East.

He said Dowco plans to launch in the first quarter a network of FabTrol resellers throughout the world who are authorized to service and support customers in their region.

“We’re getting drawn into it faster,” Dobbie said.

After a visit to Eugene last week, Dobbie was on his way to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

“People just want a piece of this,” he said.

FabTrol is a suite of software products that help steel fabricators estimate project costs and manage materials and production.

FabTrol is the “pre-eminent, dominant brand” in North America, Dobbie said, and Dowco wants to build on that success throughout the world.

FabTrol’s world headquarters will remain in Eugene because the firm’s 35 employees are based here, Dobbie said. FabTrol also has five employees at an office in the United Kingdom.

“We’re in the service business — the people business,” Dobbie said. “There’s no way we could take what FabTrol has here and transplant it somewhere else.”

The Eugene office will become the “epicenter” for increased international sales activity, he said. It will continue to provide technical service and support to customers in the United States, Canada and other markets FabTrol had been in, Dobbie said. It also will be the hub for training resellers. That could involve Eugene-based employees traveling to meet with resellers around the world, or, more likely, groups of two to four representatives from the reseller coming to Eugene for a week or two of training, he said.

Dobbie said he projects 10 percent to 15 percent employment growth in Eugene in the next couple of years.

Jack Roberts, executive director of the Lane Metro Partnership, an economic development agency, said he was glad to hear that FabTrol will continue to be based in Eugene.

“We have a great niche here,” he said. “We have a good reputation in the (software) industry.”

Some of the higher-profile software firms in the Eugene-Springfield area include Symantec, a security software maker based in Cupertino, Calif., which operates an 1,100-employee technical and customer service center in Springfield; Buzz Monkey, a computer game designer based in downtown Eugene; and Palo Alto Software, also in Eugene, which publishes business plan software.

The local software industry is characterized by a diverse group of small companies, said Brian Rooney, a labor economist with the state Employment Department.

Last year, the software and computer systems design sector in Lane County had 152 employers, with 2,037 employees, according to the Lane Workforce Partnership’s “State of the Workforce Report” released last week. Those figures don’t include computer programmers who are self-employed.

Employment in the sector is projected to grow 22 percent from 2006 to 2016, according to report. Last year, the average annual wage in the sector was $63,723, nearly twice the Lane County average of $34,328.

Dowco’s president Dobbie and Gerry Cochrane, FabTrol’s CEO and president, initially talked in November about Dowco reselling FabTrol’s products in India. Then, a European company made an offer to buy FabTrol.

“As we were getting close to inking some kind of reseller agreement,” Dobbie said, “Gerry said, ‘We’ve got an offer from another company.’ ”

“At that point, as we were sitting over lunch, I said, ‘Look, can I throw my hat in the ring? I’m interested, too,’ ” Dobbie said.

Gerry Cochrane said that over the past six months, three companies expressed interest in buying FabTrol.

She said she and her husband chose Dowco because it “has been built on the same principles of honesty and fairness to clients and staff that we value.”

To ensure a smooth transition, the Cochranes said they’ll continue to work with Dobbie over the next year or two.