Xometry Inc. has grown quickly over the past year, operating a marketplace at Xometry.com where a customer base of more than 13,000 businesses buy on-demand manufacturing services from 3,500 manufacturers.

Now, Xometry is out to provide those on-demand manufacturers and other businesses the opportunity to purchase online the materials, tools and equipment they need to complete their manufacturing jobs.

The company last week launched Xometry Supplies as a marketplace where its manufacturing partners can “take advantage of competitively priced materials with compressed processing time, same-day shipping on standard cuts and next-day shipping for most custom cuts,” Xometry says. The marketplace offers products from hundreds of suppliers.

Getting the job done on time

Drura Parrish, president, Xometry Supplies

Drura Parrish, president of Xometry Supplies, says the new marketplace will address one of the biggest challenges facing on-demand manufacturers—getting the right materials, tools and equipment in time to review a pending contract, prepare a price quote and complete the job. “Nine times out of 10, when a manufacturer is late it’s because someone else was late getting them the supplies they needed,” he says, adding, “One of the most important things we can offer is to expedite how manufacturers buy a sheet of aluminum or a drill bit.”

To launch its supplies portal, Xometry recently acquired Machine Tool & Supply, a Jackson, Tennessee-based tool supplier with more than 30 years of experience in providing industrial supplies to manufacturers. Xometry didn’t disclose what it paid for Machine Tool & Supply.

Xometry also established a materials logistics and fulfillment hub in Lexington, Kentucky, providing a central location for shipping goods to manufacturers. It built its e-commerce site in-house on open-source software from Magento Commerce, a unit of Adobe Systems Inc.

Xometry is also building artificial intelligence software into its supplies portal, enabling it to learn from website transactions and human input what its customers need and better plan inventory. “Ultimately our AI-driven algorithms will offer what our partners need when they need it, helping reduce not only cost but lead time,” says Randy Altschuler, Xometry’s co-founder and CEO. “We will use these algorithms to make it easier and faster for manufacturers to get competitive pricing and fast delivery from one place, so they can focus on making high-quality parts for customers.”

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