OFI.com.co, a six-month-old Colombia-based business-to-business e-commerce site, has ambitious plans to grow along with the expansion of B2B sales in Colombia and throughout Latin America, OFI’s founders say.

OFI’s sales have grown over 100% month-over-month, as the company continues to acquire new business customers at a high rate. With many customers re-purchasing every month, the business mirrors an informal subscription model with a particularly high average ticket. 

“The market opportunities that both Colombia and the rest of Latin America outside of Brazil provide for online-based ventures shouldn´t be ignored,” says founder and CEO Peter Ostroske. “The growth that OFI.com.co has experienced in just six months of operations is a testimony to Colombia´s market.” Ostroske cites figures from Forrester Research Inc., Euromonitor and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania that estimate B2B sales, both online and offline, in Colombia alone could reach some $14 billion this year.

To help it capitalize on that growth, OFI recently received about $750,000 in angel funding, bringing its total venture capital to about $900,000. The funds include a $150,000 grant from iNNpulsa, a Colombian government agency backed by Bancoldex, a Colombia-based bank involved in business development bank in Colombia.

OFI is now in the process of raising another $1.5 million or more in a Series A funding round, Ostroske says.

OFI says it will use the funding to build out its e-commerce technology platform, and expand its product lines and its number of sales reps, who advise online buyers via OFI’s call center.

OFI’s business model until now has been to sell companies computer networking and data storage technology systems, including installation services, then win them over as recurring buyers of office supplies, Ostroske says. It also provides its customers, through technology companies OFI deals with, such special services as training on software systems.

OFI has already learned a lesson in how to effectively present products and pricing information on its e-commerce site, Ostroske says. After OFI.com.co launched six months ago, it displayed publicly the upper-range of prices on its products, but then showed what were often more attractive prices privately to customers with registered accounts.

With that policy in effect for the first three months, it was difficult to bring in customers, Ostroske says. “No one was engaging with us,” he recalls.

Then OFI switched to a system under which it requires prospective customers who arrive on OFI.com.co to first set up an account with a call center sales rep in order to establish pricing terms. Customers then come back to do much of their basic purchasing through self-service e-commerce, relying on the sales reps only when necessary, Ostroske says. “Since we made that change, we have tripled sales,” he says.

OFI.com.co runs on e-commerce software from NetSuite Inc., which also provides OFI with its customer relationship management and other business operations software. Ostroske says OFI chose NetSuite over other technology sources because of its strong integration between e-commerce, CRM and other software applications., and the cost to deploy NetSuite. OFI didn’t comment on its cost of using NetSuite. The cost to companies to deploy NetSuite SuiteCommerce software starts at $1,600 per month and is adjusted upward based on the type of installation and the number of users, NetSuite says.

Going forward, OFI plans to build its presence in the sales of materials and supplies used in corporate maintenance, repair and operations, or MRO.

OFI takes ownership of the products it receives from suppliers, though about 90% of the products it sells are cross-docked at its warehouse. Cross-docking, or transferring goods from suppliers’ shipments to trucks headed to OFI’s customers, enables OFI to quickly sell and deliver products without having to bear the cost of storing many products in its warehouse.

“In Colombia, companies generally turn to multiple vendors to meet their supply needs,” Ricardo Parra, OFI co-founder and commercial director, says. “Through OFI.com.co´s procurement platform, we provide businesses a one-stop-shop solution, fast-and-free delivery and a personal shopper via our call center.”

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