There’s a media opportunity—and usually an existing brand—in every corner of the economy, from marquee industries like cars, healthcare, technology, and aerospace to those where the spotlight shines less brightly, if at all. But for the sectors they serve, these brands are usually indispensable, if done right.
One of those sectors is the parking industry, a dynamic $131 billion industry that affects all of us every day, but an industry we don’t really think about very much as an entity. But if we give it a brief thought, it reveals itself. At train stations and parking garages, payment used to be totally manual. You pull a ticket as you enter and pay an agent if you want to get out. Now it’s automated. Similarly, on the street, we used to put coins in a meter and turn the dial. Now, you do it at an automated kiosk, or via an app, using a credit card. In short, the parking experience is a digital, app-driven service with smartphone bookings and contactless payments.
Kevin Uhlenhaker has spent his career in the parking industry. He began his career at a parking technology company called T2 Systems. From there, he moved to a variety of parking-industry solutions providers. He co-founded and served as CEO of NuPark, followed that with a stint as the CEO of Omnipark, and most recently was an SVP at Flash. In all, he’s got more than two decades of experience in the parking industry.
Then, in 2024, Kevin switched gears and acquired the then 28-year-old Parking Today Media from its founder. The company has a 14,000-circulation print magazine, a newsletter, a website with 15,000 monthly visits, and an annual trade show. And from that pivot comes a story for Fox Tales. Kevin wasn’t a media executive. He had little media experience, but he did have a well-developed brand with an array of products. We wanted to hear how Kevin’s first two-plus years as a media-company owner are going. Here’s the conversation.
Fox Tales: Your LinkedIn profile mentions that you’ve been in the parking industry for more than two decades. How did you get your start? Was there something that attracted you in particular?
Kevin Uhlenhaker.
Kevin Uhlenhaker: This is correct. I have been in the parking industry for 26 years now. I got started with a student job in the parking office at Texas Tech University my junior year of college doing web development and internal IT support—and haven’t been able to escape the industry yet.
Fox Tales: As an entrepreneur, what opportunities did you see?
Uhlenhaker: The company I co-founded was NuPark in 2013. We were a digital-management platform for parking operations of all types, but primarily universities and cities. We sold in 2018. I joined OmniPark as CEO in 2021 for a turnaround, and we sold that company to Flash Parking five months later. I stayed with Flash for two years before leaving and soon after, purchasing Parking Today Media from its founder in March 2023.
Fox Tales: Why the move into parking-industry media?
Uhlenhaker: I jumped into B2B media in a fit of what one might call entrepreneurial insanity. Had you asked me if I would own a media company four years ago I would have called you crazy. But after leaving Flash Parking, I saw an opportunity to buy Parking Today, which is the only publication covering the entire North American parking industry. The industry is big: It’s a $100 billion-to-$150 billion a year industry, and that’s in the U.S. alone. Furthermore, I recognized that parking professionals do essential work but do not get almost any positive recognition from the public at large—or their bosses in most cases. So I wanted to tell the stories of these unappreciated professionals and share the news of an industry I have spent my career in.
Fox Tales: What is your initial take on the media business?
Uhlenhaker: What surprised me about media was how hard it was. I know, that’s classic entrepreneur mistake. But Parking Today has a monthly print magazine, a website, a news aggregator, multiple newsletters, and an annual trade show. I didn’t understand how different each of them was and the unique needs of each. Additionally, I wasn’t ready for the daily output nature of a media company. I started off as a developer and ran technology companies before Parking Today. Once software is deployed, it runs. You need to ship bug fixes (hopefully) occasionally, and roll out new features on a regular basis. But if a release slips a month or two no one typically notices and the software still runs (and you still get paid). If you miss an issue of your magazine or don’t send out your weekly newsletter, people notice, and it directly impacts your business. Thankfully, we have experienced people on our team who are much better at this part of the business than I ever could be.
Fox Tales: How is AI changing the industry?
Uhlenhaker: The actual impacts of AI are, in my opinion, not as big yet as people say, but will end up being even more transformative than we can understand today. I equate the rise of AI to the growth of the internet. It started off very slow, then had its first public moment with lots of hype, then after a few years people really began to understand how to use it. Then, after still more years, you began to see the long-term effects of the internet’s new capabilities on companies unable to deal with this change or unwilling to adapt to the new paradigm. We are still in the very early days of the AI revolution. That being said, my approach to AI is this: Either I adapt and learn to leverage it with Parking Today, or someone else is going to do it and put me out of business. We are not at the bleeding edge of this technology, but we are using it more and more every day, and I work hard to understand how we can utilize it to solve problems for our customers and provide ongoing value.