Munich Startup: What does your startup do? What problem do you solve?
Bobbie: Bobbie – Building Materials 4.0 is a building materials procurement platform for construction companies. This means we purchase, sell, and deliver building materials. Of course, a construction company doesn't want to manage 400 different building materials manufacturers for a single construction site, just as a building materials manufacturer doesn't want to maintain business relationships with the more than 280,000 construction companies in Germany. Instead, they rely on trading partners like us for sales.
The building materials trade is a long-standing business and, due to high demand, has continued to be very successful in recent years. However, established retailers have largely let digitalization pass them by—perhaps precisely because of their success. This means that product information is still looked up in paper catalogs. Bobbie digitizes and automates procurement from the request for quotation to the delivery note and thus brings the building materials trade back to the 1980s. Our digital foundation is a growing building materials database and a process landscape that maps the complexity of building materials with all their properties and their logistics from the manufacturer to the construction site.
Construction companies thus benefit from unprecedented price-performance transparency from different manufacturers and a wider product selection for their construction projects. This not only makes building material procurement more cost-effective, but also more resilient in the event of supply bottlenecks. In the future, thanks to integrated interfaces to their ERP systems, construction companies will be able to order building materials directly from their planning tools. They will then have access to thousands of products with all the data, including binding prices and freight costs for the construction project. This eliminates the incredibly complex and error-prone request for proposal process and, for the first time, enables accurate design-to-cost for construction projects in real time. A clear competitive advantage for our customers.
“The building materials industry is definitely ripe for digital transformation”
Munich Startup: But that's been around for a long time!
Bobbie: Indeed, the number of startups working in the field of digitizing building materials procurement has increased significantly since our founding in 2017. We view this positively, as it confirms our perception that the building materials industry is definitely ripe for digital transformation.
We We've observed that many of our new market competitors offer construction companies or manufacturers a digital interface to established retailers or complement their logistics functions. However, they only digitize part of the procurement process. We believe that maximum efficiency and transparency in the procurement chain—and thus maximum added value for manufacturers and construction companies—can only be achieved through a fully digital platform like Bobbie, without any additional intermediaries.
Munich Startup: What is your founding story?
BobbieTim is a third-generation member of a "concrete and building materials family" and a member of the management team of a medium-sized concrete paving manufacturer. As a result, he had to endure the consequences of an outdated business model and the antiquated processes of the established trade for a long time. Although he discussed with his colleagues how to bring the building materials trade into the 21st century, he wasn't thinking about starting a business.
That changed when he met Alex at a bachelor party. The RWTH Aachen graduate is an experienced software developer and project manager with an entrepreneurial streak. The two hit it off right away, and Alex saw the potential that digitalization could unlock in this market. After a few brainstorming sessions, it became clear to both of them that the product-market fit was right, but that established retailers would pose problems. But they also knew: There are some things you regret not doing. So Tim and Alex decided to found Bobbie and build their success on in-house expertise in both software development and building materials product and market knowledge.
Bobbie experienced a long period of suffering at the beginning
Munich Startup: What have been your biggest challenges so far?
Bobbie: As a platform, we need both suppliers and customers, and in the beginning, we had neither. On the one hand, we needed a sufficiently large portfolio of manufacturers to be able to comprehensively supply construction companies. On the other hand, you only win manufacturers as suppliers if you bring them customers. We first had to solve this chicken-and-egg problem.
For us, this meant a long period of suffering at the beginning. In the first two years, manufacturers were very skeptical about whether digital sales channels could even work. They were particularly concerned about upsetting their long-standing sales partners by opening new sales channels. Then there was also resistance from established retailers. They even used the phone to prevent manufacturers from being on our platform. We had expected resistance, but we didn't think it would be this bad.
So we had to do a lot of canvassing to gain a critical mass of manufacturers. Once we managed that, and the manufacturers had positive experiences with us, things turned around for us. The industry is very closely networked, and word gets around quickly. From then on, establishing business relationships with new manufacturers became increasingly easier. When we then entered into a partnership with Bamaka, the largest purchasing company in the construction industry in Germany, it was something of an accolade for us. Now, more manufacturers want to work with us than we can currently handle.
Munich Startup: How are things going?
Bobbie: We now have over 600 manufacturers working with us. Since we actively turned to distribution at the end of 2021, our sales have increased by 30 percent per month. Over 70 percent of our sales come from repeat contractors. We're very pleased with the development!
“We are well connected here and have made some good friends.”
Munich Startup: How have you experienced Munich as a startup location so far?
Bobbie: In Munich there is a high density of VCs and business angels and of course a booming construction industryAnd there are a lot of startups to exchange ideas with, including in construction. We have a good network here and have made some good friends with whom we are also working on cool, overarching solutions. After all, it's no good if so many digital islands form now. But the large startup environment here also presents challenges: We are by no means the only startup that would like to hire more new colleagues.
Munich Startup: Risk or security?
Bobbie: Both founders had good, secure jobs before Bobbie. Leaving those jobs and building a startup from scratch requires a fair amount of risk-taking! But we take the risk with a sense of proportion. Because each of us has over ten years of professional experience, we sometimes think a little longer about the really crazy ideas. And with Bobbie now employing 40 people, our sense of responsibility toward the staff is also growing.
