According to a press release, mdf commerce bought the Tennessee startup Vendor Registry for $5.25 million, and its co-founder and CEO Chris Van Beke will join mdf commerce as vice president of channel development, strategic sourcing.
“Strategic sourcing” is how mdf commerce refers to its category of SaaS for handling procurement — a government or company’s process of buying goods or services, including figuring out specifications for what to buy and who to buy it from. The news release said the acquisition will add about 400 buyers and 70,000 suppliers in the U.S. to mdf commerce’s procurement platform, growing its client base in 10 states and adding clients in 14 new states.
Founded in 2011, Vendor Registry created a registry where vendors and government entities could set up profiles, send out bid notifications, track responses and communicate between departments. The company pulled in about $5.5 million from a handful of funding rounds over the past four years, according to Crunchbase.
"We are impressed with the presence they have established in recent years and are excited to join forces,” said Mark Eigenbauer, mdf commerce’s president of strategic sourcing, in the statement. “Together, our existing strategic sourcing solution and Vendor Registry serve 3,500 agencies and over 300,000 suppliers, with agency clients now covering 42 states.”
Formerly called Mediagrif Interactive Technologies Inc. until its rebranding in September, mdf commerce sells a range of software tools to help private- and public-sector clients with online transactions, procurement and supply chain collaboration. The company’s president and CEO, Luc Filiatreault, said in September that the rebranding would coincide with a new focus on unified commerce and strategic sourcing, in view of how their clients relied on those technologies in 2020.
Vendor Registry is the company’s fourth acquisition in five years according to Crunchbase, also counting the contract management software company ASC in May 2016, and two e-commerce companies, Orckestra in June 2017 and k-eCommerce in November 2019.
