Like Amazon for building materials, Buildiro.com seeks to raise at least £300,000 to boost affiliate sales, activate merchants, and grow revenue.

Buildiro.com, a digital marketplace for tradespeople, builders, and DIY enthusiasts in the United Kingdom, has launched a crowdfunding investment round on Seedrs, Europe's leading online private investment platform.

Buildiro aims to raise at least £300,000 to boost affiliate sales, activate merchants, strengthen search-engine algorithms, and grow site traffic. Funds will also support the development of new features, include a returning customer “favourites” list, product price histories, related search results, an API integration for merchants and developers to access a real-time product data, and the Buildiro Eco-Index, which will rank materials based on environmental and carbon footprints.

“Crowdfunding is a wonderful way to grow our brand loyalty and position us for long-term success,” says Luke Polach, Buildiro founder and CEO. “The construction industry is one of the last to digitize, and Buildiro was created to close the technological gap. Backing Buildiro is more than an investment in a single idea; it’s an investment in the future of an industry.”

Developed by Polach, a former UK-based contractor, Buildiro.com uses affiliate marketing to connect consumers with merchants. Like Amazon for construction materials, Buildiro.com makes it easy to search across inventories of participating merchants to compare costs and product availability. Results can be filtered by brand, colour, size or price, and sales are completed on the affiliate merchant’s site.

For small- and medium-sized contractors, three key factors affect the materials supply chain: availability, distance from the job site, and price. With more than 500,000 products in its database, Buildiro.com eases navigation of these variables by ensuring better online visibility for merchants, and more efficient access to materials, tools, and supplies for buyers.

To date, Buildiro has secured numerous rounds of seed funding for its solution and has created new commercial opportunities for dozens of UK merchants. More than 40 of the UK’s leading materials suppliers are already part of the Buildiro affiliate programme ­– including online retailers B&Q, Wickes, Mano Mano UK, Robert Dyas, and Travis Perkins.

Future funding rounds will help Buildiro expand into new cities, region, and countries – connecting the world’s home-improvement merchants with an ever-larger customer base.

Since the Seedrs campaign has started, 14 new merchants have joined Buildiro.