In 2020, a group of entrepreneurs saw and identified a business opportunity within the hardware store environment and founded Tul, a startup with a clear goal: to supply hardware stores with all the products they need.
According to information from Confecámaras, in Colombia, there are approximately 40,000 hardware stores, most of which are located in residential areas, and all of them require a supplier of products such as tiles, screws, and various materials.
The start of Tul was challenging as it had to compete with established companies like Homecenter or Easy. Initially, it operated as a small and medium-sized enterprise with fewer than 50 customers.
But there was an event that boosted Tul: its participation in the Suite World event by Oracle NetSuite, held in Las Vegas, where it stood out as an example of how a small company can boost its growth through investment in cloud technology.
In its first three months of operation, Tul realized that it could not rely on Excel spreadsheets to manage information related to the quantity of products, such as screws, cement, and other materials, as well as customer information: the hardware stores.
For this reason, in mid-2020 and with only a few months of operation, they decided to hire the services of Oracle NetSuite to access an ERP system (Enterprise Resource Planning), a software that optimizes data management.
“When companies have growth potential, they need better tools to control information and the business in general; not everything can be done in a basic way,” explained Juan Carlos Ruiz, director of Oracle NetSuite for Colombia.
This change allowed Tul to move from managing its data in Excel spreadsheets to using a technological platform that facilitated its growth and organization.
The impact of this transition is reflected in the growth of its customer base, which has increased from the initial 50 to more than 8,000 at present.
The recent results and impact it has had on the market are reflected in the financial reports of June 2023, in which it is reported that Tul has raised over USD$200 million in investment rounds.
