OrderWithMe Gets $28M For Pooled SMB Purchasing

OrderWithMe, a Las Vegas startup that lets small businesses pool their purchasing to get discounts from suppliers, has raised another $28 million in funding, TechCrunch reported.

The Series B round was led by the Vegas Tech Fund, SOSVentures, BaseVC and Zappos founder Tony Hsieh. Silicon Valley Bank, Pentland Group, Advantage Capital and several other investors also participated. The new money more than quadruples the investment in OrderWithMe, which has now raised a total of $37 million.

The fresh money will be used to build out its operations to new verticals — OrderWithMe currently supports eight different small-business types, and says it has multiple industry partners lined up for the category expansion — and a new product that CEO Jonathan Jenkins said will “help OrderWithMe’s retailers bring a new consumer experience into brick-and-mortar stores.”

Jenkins wouldn’t offer any more details on the new product. But a hint may be in the fact that in July OrderWithMe hired William Reid, former director of innovation for PayPal, to run OrderWithMe’s payments business. “OrderWithMe has a huge opportunity to truly disrupt B2B payments with its vast network of suppliers and buyers,” Reid said in a statement announcing the new funding.

The current lineup of services includes aggregated purchase orders, invoices, payments and cashflow management. The advantage of pooling orders isn’t just in negotiating lower prices, but also includes the ability for small businesses to write a single weekly check and set up the same credit terms for everything purchased through OrderWithMe.

Right now, OrderWithMe offers its services to retail verticals ranging from bike shops and bakeries to plumbing and heating. The company says its client businesses do more than $3.2 billion in annual purchasing volume, though it won’t say how many businesses are part of its network. The list of new verticals will be unveiled in a few months.

The company, which was launched in China in March 2011 and moved to Las Vegas last year, is still largely focused on its roots: simplifying the supply chain between small U.S. businesses and Chinese suppliers. But it also appears to be determined to grow beyond those beginnings.

“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,” Jenkins said. “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.”