Material Bank, an NYC-based startup that helps architects and designers source their materials, announced Thursday it closed on a $28 million Series B round, bringing its total funding raised to $55 million.
Founder and CEO Adam I. Sandow told TechCrunch that Material Bank is to the design industry as Expedia is to the airline industry. It aggregates materials from hundreds of vendors and lets users filter through thousands of textiles, paints, flooring and wall coverings to find exactly what they need. Plus, because Material Bank’s warehouse is located right next to FedEx’s central hub in Memphis, Tennessee — and that warehouse is tricked out with robots from Locus Robotics — users can order their samples at midnight and get by 10 a.m. the next morning.
Manufacturers and vendors have to pay a monthly fee to post their materials on the Material Bank, but the platform is free to designers and architects.
“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,” Sandow said in a statement. “Our dramatic growth is a result of the changing demands of the industry and our ability to efficiently serve them.”
Material Bank officially launched about six months ago and claims to have helped more than 75,000 construction and design projects source billions of dollars worth of materials. The company will use this most recent funding to expand into new categories, build a new robot-powered logistics facility and further develop its platform.
