Material Bank Bags $28M in Series B Round of Financing

By: Retail CIO Outlook | Wednesday, May 06, 2020

Material Bank intends to use the newly raised investment to speed up expansion into new areas, build a new robotic logistics facility to support increased demand, and further advance its SaaS platform

Fremont, CA: Material Bank, the technology and logistics platform for the architectural and design materials industry, secured $28 million in Series B round of financing led by Bain Capital Ventures. This round, which also included existing investors such as Raine Ventures and Barry Sternlicht, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Starwood Capital Group, brings Material Bank's total funding raised to date to $55 million. In conjunction with the financing round, Merritt Hummer, partner at Bain Capital Ventures, and Jeff Sine, co-founder and partner at The Raine Group, will join Material Bank's Board of Directors.

Material Bank intends to use the newly raised investment to speed up expansion into new areas, build a new robotic logistics facility to support increased demand, and further advance its SaaS platform.

Material Bank is the world's largest material marketplace of its sort. It streamlines the complicated procedures of material search and sampling by enabling architects, designers, and corporate buyers to search hundreds of thousands of materials such as paint, flooring, and textiles across hundreds of vendors. Material Bank's powerful database is combined with its propriety robotic distribution facility, allowing users to order samples until midnight (ET) to be delivered free of charge anywhere in the US, in one box, by 10:30 AM the next morning.

"Our mission is to remove the friction that exists when searching and sampling materials. Material Bank has almost doubled its member base within the last six months and is rapidly transforming the architecture and design industry," said Material Bank founder and CEO Adam I. Sandow. "Our dramatic growth is a result of the changing demands of the industry and our ability to efficiently serve them. We're thrilled to announce support from Bain Capital Ventures during this time of rapid expansion."

"Material Bank is a perfect fit with Bain Capital Ventures' mission of investing in industry-leading B2B companies. We are excited about the potential of online marketplaces to transform the B2B commerce landscape, and Material Bank's exponential growth over the past year shows they are very well positioned to become the dominant marketplace in the materials industry," said Merritt Hummer, partner at Bain Capital Ventures.

In today's rapidly changing environment, Material Bank is taking the industry forward while design professionals adapt to working differently. Material Bank is used by architects, designers, and corporate buyers from a wide range of industries, including real estate, government, retail, healthcare, education, and hospitality. Material Bank has over 35,000 approved members who use the platform to source billions of dollars of materials for more than 75,000 construction and design projects since its official launch in January 2019.