帮助小型企业组团采购的创业公司OrderWithMe 获2800万美元投资
位于拉斯维加斯的创业公司OrderWithMe为小型企业搭建了一个组团合作、像大公司一样寻找物资和元件，然后并完成订购、付款的平台——该公司又获得了2800万美元的融资。
该公司表示将会利用这笔资金把业务推广到新的垂直领域中——据称已经“有多家行业合作伙伴排队等候”——并在该公司提供的服务链中增加一项新产品。首席执行官乔纳森·詹金斯（Jonathan Jenkins）称，OrderWithMe 正在计划“帮助OrderWithMe 的零售商在实体商店中实现全新的消费体验。”
最近一轮融资由Vegas Tech Fund，SOSVentures，BaseVC 以及谢家华（Tony Hsieh，Zappos创始人）领投；Silicon Valley Bank，Pentland Group，Advantage Capital以及其他一些投资者也参与了投资。
OrderWithMe 目前专注于聚合中小企业，帮助他们在八个垂直领域寻找供应商——包括自行车车行、面包店、儿童商店、图文照片印刷、管道施工等等。该公司没有透露加入其网络的企业数量，不过他们指出这些企业每年采购量总计超过32亿美元。新的垂直领域将会在未来几个月内公布。
其中的思路在于，假如说亚马逊、PayPal、eBay 及阿里巴巴这样的电子商务公司，以及百思买这样的大型连锁零售店已经在大规模经济的基础上打下了一片天地，相同原理的大规模采购也能够帮助小型企业在供应商那里争取到更好的采购合同。对于供应商来说，尤其是不在中国的供应商——OrderWithMe 最初就是在中国成立——想要和其中一些小型企业建立关系并不容易。
该公司于2011年（当时还在中国）获得了TC Disrupt Battlefield 北京站的冠军。2013年，也许是为了更接近小型企业零售商的所在地，该公司搬到了美国——具体说来，是内华达州的拉斯维加斯。随后该公司宣布从拉斯维加斯改造计划的倡导者谢家华、Vegas Tech Fund 等几家投资方那里获得了600万美元的投资。
软件及云服务的大范围发展为中小企业带来了能与大型企业匹配的业务运作方式。OrderWithMe 正是把这一点带到了供应链管理及相关领域中。
“OrderWithMe 在成立的头三年里调研了整个库存采购及管理流程中的痛点，建立了有助于简化这一流程的技术，”詹金斯在声明中这样说道，“现在我们有了一套完整的解决方案，能够帮助小型企业管理库存采购的整个流程，从电子采购订单一直到发票以及付款。”
“OrderWithMe 面临着绝佳的机会，以其供应商和采购商的大规模网络成为B2B 支付领域的真正搅局者，”他在声明中说道，“独树一帜的商业模式可以让我们快速扩大规模，因为我们支持独立零售商组团通过统一账户与供应商洽谈。这样零售商就能通过我们完成所有的库存采购工作，并且降低成本，改善自身的现金流。”
原文：OrderWithMe Raises Another $28M To Help Small Businesses Procure Like Big Ones
OrderWithMe, a startup based out of Las Vegas that has built a platform for small businesses to come together to effectively act like big ones to source, order and pay for supplies and components – has raised another $28 million in funding.
The company says the money will be used to build out its operations to new verticals — it has “multiple industry partners lined up” for this already, it says — as well as a new product to add to the chain of services already provided by the startup. OrderWithMe, says CEO Jonathan Jenkins, is planning “to help OrderWithMe’s retailers bring a new consumer experience into brick-and-mortar stores.”
We are reaching out to the company to get more details on the new product.
This latest round of funding was led by the Vegas Tech Fund, SOSVentures, BaseVC and Tony Hsieh; Silicon Valley Bank, Pentland Group, Advantage Capital and several others also participated. To date the company has raised $37 million.
OrderWithMe currently focuses on bringing together businesses with suppliers for eight different verticals that include bike shops, bakeries, children’s stores, photo & printing and plumbing. It doesn’t say how many businesses are a part of its network, but notes that collectively they total more than $3.2 billion in annual purchasing volume. The new verticals will be made public in the next few months.
The thinking here is that if e-commerce companies like Amazon, PayPal, eBay and Alibaba, as well as large brick and mortar chains like Best Buy, have built their businesses out on economies of scale, the same principles of sourcing could help smaller businesses get better deals with suppliers, too. And for the suppliers, especially those based out of China, where OrderWithMe was first founded, trying to connect with some of those smaller businesses is not always that easy.
The company, when still based out of China, was the winner of the TC Disrupt Battlefield in Beijing in 2011. In 2013, perhaps to be closer to the market where its small business retailers are located, it relocated to the U.S. — specifically, Las Vegas, NV. It subsequently announced a $6 million round from Las Vegas regeneration cheerleader Hsieh and the Vegas Tech Fund, among several others.
The company taps into a bigger trend of using the Internet and technology in general to help start and build small businesses (a spirit that is played out in the tech world of startups, which are all, effectively, SMBs in their early days). This has seen the development of a whole range of software, and cloud-based services that bring SMBs on par with how large enterprises do business. OrderWithMe is bringing that to the area of supply chain management and related services.
“OrderWithMe’s first three years were spent identifying the pain points across the entire inventory purchasing and management process and building the technology to help streamline this process,” said Jenkins in a statement. “Now we have a full solution that helps small businesses manage their inventory purchases all the way from electronic purchase orders to invoices and payments.”
Part of that effort has also been helped by way of a key hire, William Reid, who had previously been director of innovation for PayPal. He now runs the startup’s payments business.
“OrderWithMe has a huge opportunity to truly disrupt B2B payments with its vast network of suppliers and buyers,” he said in a statement. “The unique business model allows us to scale quickly as we support groups of independent retailers to act as one big account to our suppliers. This provides retailers the ability to make all of their inventory purchases through us while lowering their costs and improving their cash flow.”
英文文章来源：TC
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