NuORDER CEO Heath Wells and co-founder Olivia Skuza, while running an agency servicing the apparel, retailers and brands space, saw “firsthand the antiquated processes brands & retailers used to conduct wholesale,” Wells said.
“To think the market is so large and everyone is still hand-writing orders and using printed catalogs and line-sheets was ludicrous,” Wells said. “Something had to change. As a result, NuORDER was born to revolutionize the apparel industry. We took the same notion that e-commerce has revolutionized consumer buying and applied it to wholesale.”
NuORDER launched out of those experiences in August 2011 to bring wholesale buying to digital.
The company took advantage of market trends and the lack of such a solution in the fashion industry to drive success. First, fashion retailers began to hold less stock as a result of the 2008 economic downturn. This began a need to purchase from brands on more regular intervals as result. Brands also came under pressure to sell more with less resources. The increasing ubiquity of e-commerce also pushed apparel brands to move to digital.
The rise of the iPad also created an electronic tool, as Wells puts it “a tool that could honestly replace pen and paper.” NuORDER offers a cloud-based iPad solution that allows sales rep to create linesheets, forecasts, and official orders on the go – while completely offline.
As a result of NuORDER’s robust platform, they work with big name fashion brand such as Helmut Lang, Levi’s, Theory, Ben Sherman, Elizabeth & James, Adidas, Ted Baker and Citizens Of Humanity. More than 500 brands and 80,000 retailers utilize NuORDER. Their core customer is a brand who is established (usually $10 million+ revenues). To date, NuORDER has sold over 5.5 million styles through the system.
NuORDER’s current business modeling is a SaaS platform that charges what Wells calls “a reasonable subscription fee,” noting that, “the ROI is disproportionate to the cost.” The solution is free for buyers (retailers).
The company has completed two rounds of major funding with another one in the works. Wells said, “The investor list includes a mix of large venture capital firms and industry heavyweights. This mix works really well as we can balance viewpoints.”
NuORDER is headquartered in Los Angeles with a New York office in SOHO and has 50 employees across the locations that look to engage with their customers, retain them, and grow the company.
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