By Steven Feldman— Broadlume, parent company of industry leading technology services providers FloorForce and Creating Your Space, has purchased Retail Lead Management (RLM), the leading CRM company founded by Jason Goldberg in 2017. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Broadlume adds about 2,000 accounts to its network, giving it about 3,000 locations using its software platform.
Todd Saunders, CEO of Broadlume, told FCNews in an exclusive interview that there were two reasons for the deal. “The first is we want to provide flooring retailers with an all-in-one solution, integrating their digital marketing and website data with their client data,” he said. “This will give retailers unique insight into their businesses so they can better understand ROI. Since we started the business, customers have been asking us to build this all-in-one platform, and a CRM is a huge step toward this.”
The second reason is the deal includes Goldberg coming on as a strategic advisor. “Jason is one of the best flooring dealers in the country, and he’s going to be helping us build software for the flooring industry moving forward,” Saunders said. “We’re excited to have RLM as it sits today as a software company, but we’re also excited for Jason to help us build a world-class, all-in-one software stack for retailers just opening their first store, all the way to stores with many locations.”
The fact that Goldberg has built America’s Floor Source in Columbus, Ohio, into a $130 million operation did not go unnoticed in the decision to purchase RLM. “While we have people that have worked in flooring stores and in manufacturing, we have no one that has built a business of this scale from the ground up,” Saunders said. “Jason has done that, so his coming to this team will increase our perspective of not only what dealers do today, but also what should they be doing moving forward. We’re big proponents of listening to our customers and learning their day-to-day pain points, and we’re very good at solving them. But what Jason brings to the table is the ability to find new ways to help them grow their businesses and their operations.”
Specifically, FloorForce and Creating Your Space customers will now benefit from a much deeper integration with RLM, Saunders said, which will be its featured CRM product. “If you are both a FloorForce and RLM customer, there will be operational efficiencies. But from a features standpoint, we’ll be able to help our customers track everything. We want our customers to understand the ROI of every click on their website, every lead in their CRM and every sale they do.”
Broadlume could have built its own CRM platform, but the customers who use RLM love it, and those customers have all seen a quantitative impact on their business using it, Saunders said. “RLM is already the market leader, and as part of the deal we acquire a strategic advisor like Jason. There’s no amount of money we could spend to gain something like that.”
Aside from looking to significantly grow his own business, Goldberg said he believes furthering the flooring industry is good for everyone. “He’s a huge proponent of helping the industry move forward through technology and by helping other independent flooring dealers, we can help the industry as a whole, which is good for everyone,” Saunders said.
While current FloorForce and Creating Your Space customers get the best CRM platform out there, RLM customers benefit from faster product integration and a more robust product roadmap. “However, if you’re an RLM user and not a FloorForce or Creating Your Space user, you will miss out on some of the attribution and integration features that we’re building, mostly because without access to the website, we can’t build an all-in-one technology platform that synchronizes the data,” Saunders said. “However, every feature RLM customers are getting now we will maintain and we will continue to provide the level of support they expect.”
The RLM acquisition is just the beginning to offering flooring retailers an all-in-one solution, Saunders said. “Our end goal is to have a fully integrated system where a dealer works with one account manager, one team, one company, with a system of tools all the way from in-store merchandising to inventory management to website to CRM, all working well together rather than trying to piecemeal it like the flooring retailers are doing today. We want to make the retailers’ lives easier with technology, not harder.”
When the dust clears, a Broadlume retailer will have a decided advantage over his or her competition, Saunders said. Why? “We want our retailers to be at the forefront. We are constantly evolving and constantly at the forefront of technology. Dealers who aren’t using us will be falling behind quickly from a technology stack perspective. A lot of software companies in our industry are complacent and happy with where they’re at today. We have 150 employees and a 50-person engineering team passionate about helping retailers succeed.”