Vancouver's BuildDirect – which is well on its way to becoming the Amazon of home building products – has secured $30 million in series B financing and plans to add 300 new employees this year to its headcount.
The financing is being led by Mohr Davidow Ventures, and also includes BDC Venture Capital. A year and a half ago, BuildDirect also received $16 million in financing from OMERS Ventures.
The e-commerce company experienced 70% growth in 2012 and 100% in 2013, with its headcounts increasing from 65 employees to 175 in two years.
"We intend to hire 300 additional people in 2014," BuildDirect cofounder and CEO Jeff Booth told Business in Vancouver. "It's all local."
Booth said the biggest challenge will be competing with other Vancouver-based tech companies for tech talent.
BuildDirect is what Home Depot might look like if it had been built by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The company supplies building contractors and do-it-yourselfers with flooring, roofing, tiling, decking, fixtures, patio furniture and other home building materials, but has no retail operations.
Buyers browse online for products and can ask for samples, which are shipped out for free from BuildDirect's 100,000-square-foot warehouse in Richmond. Samples can be delivered anywhere in the U.S. overnight.
The company spent years building its distribution and delivery network. It now has 12 distribution centres throughout North America, where building materials are brought in from all over the world.
The company is focused primarily on the U.S. market, but recently expanded its Canadian footprint by adding distribution centres in Vancouver and Toronto.
What gives BuildDirect its greatest edge is its technology. The company developed an algorithm that uses BuildDirect's own web site activity to predict what products will be in demand and in what geographic region. Taking the guesswork of the supply-demand forecasts reduces costs all along the supply chain.
"Despite its multi-billion dollar size, the home improvement product supply chain is fragmented and inefficient," said Katherine Barr, general partner for Mohr Davidow Ventures, who will join BuildDirect's board of directors.
"In the past several years, BuildDirect has achieved phenomenal growth by effectively leveraging sophisticated predictive analytics to address gaps and inefficiencies in the home improvement products industry.
"With this latest round of funding, BuildDirect is well poised to fulfill its goal of transforming the home improvement industry by leveraging its innovative data analytics and technology platform."
