Matching Skilled Artisans with Discerning Shoppers
CustomMade
Mike Salguero and Seth Rosen
Back in 1996, Ted Whittenkraus, a woodworker in central Massachusetts, launched CustomMade as a marketplace for woodworkers to sell handcrafted goods. Operated for years on a shoestring budget, his site got a boost in 2009, when Boston University buddies Seth Rosen and Mike Salguero bought it for $150,000 and embarked on an ambitious redesign, spending $20,000 at first and eventually hiring five full-time developers to improve search and enable vendors to update pages themselves. Today artisans of all stripes can display three sample projects for free or buy subscriptions ranging from $400 to $1,200 per year to post additional projects that get preferential search rankings on the site. Buyers can browse from thousands of listings—from handmade pens to furniture to houses. CustomMade also collects a 15 percent commission for already-made works sold through the site (there's no commission for custom projects). Rosen and Salguero, both 29, say unlike competitors Etsy and EBay, CustomMade focuses on custom goods and services from professional artisans rather than hobbyists. The partners say the 20-employee Boston business has 1,500 paid accounts, has raised $1.45 million from angel investors, and generated about $500,000 in revenue in 2010. They expect to become profitable by mid-2011 and bring in $5 million by the end of the year. The next steps, Salguero says, are to add functions that make it easier for shoppers to find goods and improve navigation around the site.
—Venessa Wong (posted on Jan. 11, 2011)
Mike Salguero and Seth Rosen
Back in 1996, Ted Whittenkraus, a woodworker in central Massachusetts, launched CustomMade as a marketplace for woodworkers to sell handcrafted goods. Operated for years on a shoestring budget, his site got a boost in 2009, when Boston University buddies Seth Rosen and Mike Salguero bought it for $150,000 and embarked on an ambitious redesign, spending $20,000 at first and eventually hiring five full-time developers to improve search and enable vendors to update pages themselves. Today artisans of all stripes can display three sample projects for free or buy subscriptions ranging from $400 to $1,200 per year to post additional projects that get preferential search rankings on the site. Buyers can browse from thousands of listings—from handmade pens to furniture to houses. CustomMade also collects a 15 percent commission for already-made works sold through the site (there's no commission for custom projects). Rosen and Salguero, both 29, say unlike competitors Etsy and EBay, CustomMade focuses on custom goods and services from professional artisans rather than hobbyists. The partners say the 20-employee Boston business has 1,500 paid accounts, has raised $1.45 million from angel investors, and generated about $500,000 in revenue in 2010. They expect to become profitable by mid-2011 and bring in $5 million by the end of the year. The next steps, Salguero says, are to add functions that make it easier for shoppers to find goods and improve navigation around the site.
—Venessa Wong (posted on Jan. 11, 2011)
