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Why This Construction Marketplace Founder Prioritized Supply Over Speed

Cross-border procurement isn’t exactly the hottest topic in Silicon Valley. But when COVID disrupted global supply chains in 2020, GlobalFair founder Shaily Garg saw an opportunity to transform how US contractors source construction materials from Southeast Asia.

In a recent Category Visionaries episode, Shaily shared how she built a B2B marketplace handling orders averaging $120,000, achieving 110% month-over-month growth and 98% customer retention. But perhaps more interesting than these metrics is how she approached building in an industry resistant to technological change.

Starting with Supply, Not Scale

While many marketplace founders obsess over rapid expansion across categories, Shaily took a contrarian approach. “Very soon, four months in, we realized that the moat in this business would be supply,” she explains. “So we said, let’s pick up just one category, grow that, and then we’ll figure out rest of it.”

This focus on supply over scale proved prescient. By deeply understanding their manufacturers and controlling quality at every step, GlobalFair could offer something rare in cross-border trade: guaranteed reliability at scale.

“We are not just a marketplace, we are a managed marketplace,” Shaily emphasizes. “If in a factory, you define man, machine, material, method – other than machine, everything is owned or controlled by GlobalFair.”

The Cold Start Problem: Solving Trust in High-Stakes Transactions

For any marketplace founder, the chicken-and-egg problem is daunting. But GlobalFair faced an additional challenge: convincing contractors to trust an unknown platform with six-figure orders.

Their solution wasn’t fancy technology. Instead, they built trust through rigorous quality control: “QC is a very big part of whatever we send… pre-production, in production, and post production, pre shipment, there are four levels of QC that happens.”

This hands-on approach paid off. Today, their customers order eight times their initial purchase within the first year – a testament to how well they’ve solved the trust problem in cross-border procurement.

The Counter-Intuitive Approach to Tech Adoption

Perhaps most interesting is how GlobalFair approached technology adoption in a traditional industry. Rather than trying to force digital transformation, they made their technology so impactful that customers pulled it into their workflows.

“This is a sector which is very conventional,” Shaily notes. “While on the supplier side, the adoption in technology is not that big a concern versus on the buyer side, because this is a legacy, relationship based industry.”

Their solution? “What we would then ensure that our technology is extremely intuitive and to an extent that it directly impacts their top line and bottom line… So we don’t need to sell that. Hey, use the tech versus it becomes a pull based sell wherein they’re using the tech irrespective of us pushing for it.”

The Power of Physical Presence

One of Shaily’s biggest regrets? Not relocating to their target market sooner. “Be in customer markets on day one if that’s needed, or even day -30,” she advises. “Because then in that case, maybe you reach at that right problem statement and right business model faster.”

This insight came from experience. GlobalFair pivoted their model twice in just over two years before finding their current approach. Being closer to customers could have accelerated this learning process.

The Storytelling Imperative

For B2B founders, particularly those building in traditional industries, Shaily emphasizes the importance of tailoring your narrative to different audiences. “If I’m talking to an Asia based investor, I would be pitching them manufacturing as a service, as a story. But if I’m talking to a western investor or a UK or a US based investor, I would be talking about labor productivity and construction automation as a story.”

GlobalFair’s journey offers a masterclass in marketplace building: focus on supply before scale, solve trust through operations before technology, and make your product so valuable that adoption becomes inevitable. For founders working on similar challenges, it’s a powerful reminder that sometimes the best path to disruption isn’t moving fast and breaking things – it’s moving deliberately and building trust.