As a vacation rental operator for almost a decade, Jeff Iloulian said he experienced several pain points within a 48-hour period, including filling up almost 50 shopping carts at Ikea, waiting in the checkout line for hours, a fender bender involving the U-Hauls he and his team were driving, and two full days building furniture.
“It became clear that there had to be a better solution out there,” he said.
So he co-founded HostGPO in 2019 to provide a curated selection of “high-quality, durable furnishings and supplies” for vacation rental owners.
The company enables operators to join its digital platform to get goods and services at “significant” discounts, as well as tools to streamline the ordering processes, he told LA Inno.
It does this by working closely with a curated group of suppliers, including companies in the furniture, appliances and home goods realms.
HostGPO serves anyone with three or more vacation rental units up to those with thousands of units, as well as large vacation rental companies. The startup works with most of the largest vacation rental operators, Iloulian said, as well as smaller operators getting off the ground. He declined to disclose the names of any of them.
It recently closed a $6 million round. Navitas Capital, a Los Angeles-based VC firm led the round along with OMNIA Partners, one of the largest group purchasing organizations in public and private sector procurement. L.A. investors Spencer Rascoff, the co-founder of Zillow, and Brian Lee, co-founder of LegalZoom and The Honest Co., also participated.
Foundation
Iloulian is a former attorney. He created HostGPO with co-founder Michael Skiles.
One of the challenges in creating the marketplace was “building a bridge from two sides,” Iloulian said.
“Our vendors provide us with the discounts that we get in part because of our group’s volume,” he said. “At the same time, members come to our website in order to access a variety of different vendors. It’s been a challenge at times to continue to generate meaningfully in both directions.”
Membership
HostGPO currently serves about 250,000 rental homes.
There’s a member portal where those who join can get instant quotes and order home goods directly. The first three months are free. Then the membership price is based on how many units a member has. For example, for someone with less than 10 units it's $10/month.
“One great part of our business has been the community effect of strength in numbers,” he told LA Inno. “As we continue to grow in number and size, our deals get better and our ability to support our members also increases.”
One way it's supporting its members is by trying to protect them from the forces of inflation and other world events that are exerting pressure on costs. HostGPO has been extending the length of many of its contracts and has put new limits on price increases by its vendors, he said.
Milestones
HostGPO recently launched a core collection in collaboration with West Elm, which offers modern furniture and home decor.
“This allows our members to access pricing that is even better than our already best-in-class discounts,” Iloulian said.
The startup plans to continue adding vendor partners to its marketplace, and eventually become “a true one-stop-shop model,” he added.
