More than 2.14 billion people are expected to make online purchases this year, and as competition grows increasingly fierce in the e-commerce space, retailers are tasked with discovering ways to make their online stores stand out from the crowd. Based in Melbourne, Australia with a presence in Atlanta, SaaS developer Marketplacer just pulled in $38 million in fresh funding to lend brands and retailers a helping hand.
The company helps brands, retailers and suppliers build and grow their online marketplaces at scale. Marketplacer’s cloud-based solution equips customers with the tools and functionalities needed to expand their online stores into scalable marketplaces in less time than they could with traditional commerce platforms.
It also enables businesses to work with third-party sellers — like Nike or Etsy — to expand their catalog of product offerings without having to hold the physical inventory and deal with real estate required and associated overhead, according to Jim Stirewalt, Marketplacer’s U.S. president.
In 2007, Marketplacer co-founders Jason Wyatt and Sam Salter designed BikeExchange as a one-stop online destination for bicycle buyers across Australia. After that company expanded into Europe, Asia and North America, the technology behind it was used to launch Marketplacer in 2017. The company has grown substantially since. To date, the platform has been deployed in over 10 countries, has more than 100 marketplaces and connects more than 20,000 businesses across the globe.
Following the company’s latest round of funding, from investors including Acorn Capital, Lennox Capital Partners and Salesforce Ventures, Marketplacer will focus largely on product development, building out its partnership programs and expanding to serve more customers across the U.S. and Asia-Pacific regions.
“We have a strong growth strategy that centers around our partnerships with other commerce platforms like Salesforce Commerce Cloud or Adobe Commerce Cloud, with whom we share customers,” Stirewalt told Built In over email. “We’ll continue building out technology connectors to make it easier for current e-commerce businesses to implement marketplace technology through those partners.”
Over the next year, the company will also devote efforts to enable the D2C seller community. It’s developing a seller portal that expands vendors’ capabilities and makes it easier to onboard customer marketplaces, Stirewalt said.
The company operates a distributed team across the U.S. and is currently exploring options for physical spaces in its growing hubs, such as Atlanta. Having recently expanded its global team to 160, Marketplacer plans to exceed a headcount of 200 soon, according to Stirewalt. As it expands its U.S. operations, the company will focus on hiring across sales, customer success and management, partner marketing and product development.
