
HostGPO
Founded in
2020, HostGPO provides discounts on furniture, decor and other supplies to
short-term rental hosts that become members of its community.
At the 2021
VRMA/Phocuswright Battleground event, HostGPO tied for first in the category of
Innovator of the Year and won the People’s Choice Award.
What
is your 30-second pitch to investors?
HostGPO is the first international group purchasing organization (GPO)
for the short-term rental industry. We help our members save time and money by
offering access to exclusive deals on furniture, supplies and more from the
best vendors. We have harnessed the collective buying power of our group to
negotiate the guaranteed best deals for our industry with a curated group of
select vendor partners whose products are ideal for short-term rentals. Our
partners include community favorites like West Elm, Standard Textile, RugsUSA
and Public Goods.
While we are certainly a “procurement and supply chain management
solution,” we are first and foremost a community built by hosts for hosts. We
work to combine and share the collective knowledge and purchasing insights of
thousands of hosts into one source. Our goal is to make our members’ businesses
better by streamlining ordering, lowering costs and helping to deliver
five-star experiences to guests by providing better products.
Describe
both the business and technology aspects of your startup.
HostGPO is an industry specific group purchasing organization.
After a free trial, members pay an annual membership fee to continue to access
our HostGPO member portal. This portal grants access to our confidential deals
and proprietary ordering solutions for short term rental hosts. Through our
direct integrations with our vendor partners, we’re able to offer industry best
rates and streamlined ordering to anyone with three or more vacation rental
units.
Give us
your SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the
company.
- Strength
- Exclusive, industry best
deals with the leading vendor partners in the space
- Ability to offer vacation rental specific benefits through
products that are hospitality optimized
- Already over 150,000 vacation rental units as part of our “groupAbility”
to harness the collective knowledge of our membership, implement their
suggestions, and share our insights
- An all-star team of professionals
who also have vacation rental industry expertise
- Weakness
- Many users need to be
educated on the benefits of joining the group, and on individual vendor options
- With the wide range of
options needed to service a variety of members (from economy to luxury units,
from 3 to 3,000+ units) we are still developing our full list of vendor
partners
- Although we are
currently in the U.S. and Canada, our availability for all vendors to ship to all
locations is limited
- Opportunities
- Further development of
our integrated ordering technologies
- Ability to increase both
vendor offerings and geographic offerings
- Threats
- Market volatility in
travel and short-term rental industry
- Conglomerates and low-quality
online knock-off vendors capturing market share by sacrificing product quality
for bargain basement pricing
What are the travel pain points you are trying to alleviate from
both the customer and the industry perspective?
On the host
side, we are trying to eliminate scouring retail stores for linens and towels,
no more waiting for online Black Friday deals, no more haggling for bulk
discounts with your local mattress store. On the industry side, we are trying
to reduce the number of times a guest shows up to a house and feels the
pictures don’t accurately reflect the unit itself. If we are able to elevate
the collective quality of all vacation rental units, we can help bolster
overall demand for vacation rentals as compared to alternatives.
So you've
got the product, now how will you get lots of customers?
The
majority of our sign ups so far have come from member referrals. This has
allowed us to grow organically and build what has become a true community.
Becoming a trusted name in the industry was one of our core principles in
starting this company. With that trust, our members know that our
recommendations are not made lightly as our partners have been heavily vetted
and our deals were heavily negotiated. And winning VRMA/Phocuswright Battleground
Innovator of the Year and People’s Choice awards for 2021 helped too.
Tell us what
process you've gone through to establish a genuine need for your company and
the size of the addressable market.
HostGPO was
born out of necessity. Any vacation rental operator who has attempted to scale
knows the pains of having to source and procure goods and services. The
addressable market conceivably includes every professional vacation rental
operator, business or individual, operating three or more vacation rental
units.
How and
when will you make money?
Our
business model is centered on continuing to grow to a massive amount of members
paying extremely low membership fees. As we grow, we anticipate the need to
continue to invest capital into our infrastructure will diminish and we can
focus our efforts on developing new vendor partnerships in additional
categories.
What are
the backgrounds and previous achievements of the founding team?
The
founding HostGPO team were Princeton, Harvard and Columbia graduates who had
backgrounds and graduate degrees in technology, law, and business. This
educational backdrop, mixed with decades of collective experience in real
estate, interior design, and vacation rentals were the perfect ingredients to
develop and launch HostGPO.
How have
you addressed diversity and inclusion within your business?
Even though
we are still a small (but growing) company, diversity and inclusion are core
values at HostGPO. We are comprised of over 50% female and gender
non-conforming people. As a fully remote company, we have been able to hire
individuals from diverse backgrounds and geographic locations.
What's been
the most difficult part of founding the business so far?
We launched
HostGPO one month before the COVID pandemic. Enduring through the first months
of our startup, when the travel industry was reeling and many were losing their
vacation rental properties, was extremely challenging.
Generally,
travel startups face a fairly tough time making an impact - so why are you
going to be one of the lucky ones?
There is no
question that HostGPO has the best deals and discounts on furniture, linens,
amenities and the like - but more than that, we are first and foremost a
community. As our group grows, our strength, knowledge and yes, even deals,
continue to grow as well. Our secret sauce is our size and the belief that our
members have in our collective mission.
A year from
now, what state do you think your startup will be in?
We hope a
year from now to have deployed our new ordering technologies, expanded to our
next geographic territories and have expanded our vendor offering categories.
We also hope to be able to offer additional member perks like stays in our
HostGPO Houses, access to informative market research studies and entry into
our industry conferences.
What is your end-game? (Going public, acquisition, growing and
staying private, etc.)
Our end-game is simple, to keep helping short term rental hosts
scale their businesses and to improve the overall state of the industry.
Whether that means going public or staying private or anything in between - our
goal is to do whatever we can to continue to help our member community in the
most meaningful way we can.
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