Engineering Exponential Growth: From Startup to a $9.9M Acquisition

The B2B marketplace that transformed a startup into an industry leader

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To scale from MVP to market leader, Bulletin required a dominant wholesale e-commerce platform. We engineered the marketplace that powered their growth to over 3K brands and 26K+ retailers. By automating the complex curation engine and critical retailer veto process, our robust, cloud-native solution became the central asset in the $9.9M strategic acquisition by Emerald Holding, proving our ability to build high-value, market-defining technology.

Client

Emerald (Bulletin)

Country

USA

Market

Globally

Type

Enterprise

Story

A Y Combinator-backed venture, Bulletin was founded to disrupt wholesale retail by connecting independent brands with a curated network of retailers, aiming to digitize a traditionally fragmented market. This vision fueled rapid growth, culminating in a strategic acquisition by B2B trade show leader Emerald Holding (NYSE: EEX) to transform its iconic NY NOW brand for a digital-first future.

Business Impact

Enabled Exponential Growth to 26,000+ Retailers

‍The automated architecture directly enabled the platform's explosive growth, scaling to support over 3,000 brands and more than 26,000 retailers. By removing the friction of the previous manual paradigm for new brands to join, the platform's product diversity exploded, creating a vibrant ecosystem and a self-reinforcing cycle of growth that was ignited and sustained by the automated onboarding engine.

Achieved 95% Operational Automation

‍The project achieved its primary operational goal by realizing 95% operational automation, a direct result of the self-service brand portal and the digitized curation engine. This near-total elimination of manual data entry and workflow management freed the Bulletin team from low-value, repetitive tasks, allowing them to shift focus from administrative overhead to high-impact strategic initiatives like marketing and community building.

Secured a $9.9M Strategic Acquisition by Emerald (NYSE: EEX)

‍The ultimate validation of the platform's success was the $9.9M strategic acquisition by Emerald Holding. The robust, scalable, and efficient technology platform was the pivotal, high-value asset that anchored the deal. The acquisition provided a significant return to founders and investors and fulfilled a critical strategic need for Emerald, which sought a dynamic digital platform to complement its traditional trade shows.

$9.9M

Strategic Acquisition

$15M

Annual Platform Revenue

29K+

Brands & Retailers

95%

Operational Automation

Focus Area

Domains

E-Commerce

Enterprise Software

AI & ML Solutions

Marketplaces

CMS

API

Architecture

Databases & Integrations

Services

Business Analysis & BI

MVP Development

Product Management & Strategy

Code Optimization & Performance

Cloud Services

Web Development

Infrastructure & DevOps

Backend Development

Frontend Development

Industries

Artificial Intelligence

E-Commerce & Retail

Supply Chain and Logistics

Tech Stack

Java

Vue.js

Amazon Services

AWS Managed Services

Cypress

Docker

Google Analytics

Shopify

Challenges

Bulletin's primary challenge was a technology ceiling created by its unscalable, manual-first model, which limited growth and revenue potential. This was compounded by inefficient, error-prone processes for critical wholesale operations. The core value proposition – a "curated buying experience" empowering brands with a retailer veto process – was a logistical impossibility to manage manually at scale, threatening the trust and quality the brand was built on. To succeed, they needed to build a defensible technology asset that could support thousands of users and attract strategic partners.

Solutions

The solution was to architect a robust, cloud-native B2B wholesale marketplace engineered for exponential growth on a serverless AWS architecture. The critical intervention was the digitization of the platform's curation engine. We developed a sophisticated, rules-based system that automated the intricate retailer veto process, allowing brands to define their own distribution criteria directly on the platform. This system automated complex e-commerce logic – from custom pricing to streamlined order management – all integrated via a custom CMS and robust APIs, transforming a manual bottleneck into a scalable, self-service engine.