Woman Entrepreneur Building a Successful, VC Funded Business: Olivia Skuza, CEO of NuORDER (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What is the process of bringing these people onto your platform?

Olivia Skuza: We’re revolutionizing behavior that has been prevalent for a very long time. We’re asking them to work in a digital environment and to upload all their information into our product so that they can use it to work with retailers online. In 2011 when we were the first to market, it was quite visionary.

We’re constantly talking to businesses about this being the future. That’s how they always thought of us. Now, that’s change. They’ve realized that just as B2C is important to them, B2B is also equally important. They have budgets allocated towards these types of systems. In the early days, it was hard because change is hard. Even if you can say to someone, “This is going to create this type of efficiency,” it’s still hard.

I will say that today, that is very different because businesses are realizing that if they don’t do it now, they’re going to be way behind. It’s really going to hurt their business. It’s a very similar trend to what we saw with B2C. Back in the day when B2C was a brand new thing, everyone was saying, “No one wants to shop online because you need to see, touch, and feel the product.” That wasn’t true. Today, it’s very important for a business to have a B2C strategy. That’s exactly the same movement that we’re going with B2B e-commerce.

Sramana Mitra: It sounds to me like a lot of what you do is strategy consulting. Is that what the business is?

Olivia Skuza: No. They essentially know who their customers are and where they want to grow. They have all that information. What we’re doing is allowing them to work with retailers and present products in a much more beautiful way. Being fast to market is a really big thing.

They can quickly put themselves in front of the retailers and present what inventory they have on hand. We have an account management team that works with these brands closely. We help them roll out the platform but they have those resources in-house.

Sramana Mitra: You are doing a marketplace where retailers operate in these categories that are more visual merchandising-oriented categories. You work in those categories. You have B2B wholesalers and B2C retailers who are connecting through your platform.

Olivia Skuza: Yes, a marketplace and an ordering platform.

Sramana Mitra: You started this in what year?

Olivia Skuza: 2010 was when the ‘aha’ moment happened but we founded it in 2011. We were bootstrapping the business. We fronted the capital from the agency that we had and divided all the profits from that to fund the development before we decided to go out and raise money. We did everything ourselves. We did the customer service until we decided that we were ready to raise money.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Woman Entrepreneur Building a Successful, VC Funded Business: Olivia Skuza, CEO of NuORDER
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