Singaporean manufacturing CEO moves to Colorado to expand U.S. operations

Factorem’s Alexandra Zhang, left, and Jason Klotsche of Droplet, right, speaking on a panel last year. (Courtesy photo)

Droplet Measurement Technologies couldn’t compete.

When trying to order its custom hardware, the Longmont-based maker of pollution monitoring parts was often pushed aside for bigger fish like Ball Corp.

Jason Klotsche

“In this market, especially in Boulder, we’re competing for capacity with Ball and aerospace with those large government contracts,” said Jason Klotsche, Droplet’s former chief operating officer. He is now the vice president of finance for Envea, which bought the manufacturer in November.

“For us, if we want to buy parts and we go to machine shops, we have to buy a minimum of 10 or 20.

“But we don’t need that much,” he continued. “It’s always been tough to sit on inventory for a small business strapped for cash flow.”

But since using Factorem, a site that connects small and mid-sized businesses with a network of manufacturers in Southeast Asia, wait times and prices have dropped. 

“Not only is the cost cut by 50 to 60%, but now we only have to buy the exact amount we need and not sit on inventory,” Klotsche said.

Factorem was founded in Singapore in 2020. Droplet was the company’s first stateside customer. In October, Factorem CEO Alexandra Zhang moved from Singapore to Colorado to build out the company’s U.S. operations.

“Our North Star is to be the go-to platform for fast, seamless and scalable manufacturing solutions,” she said. “(Customers) just want fast, affordable and quality. The goal is to make hardware less hard.

Alexandra Zhang

“Not only do we want to support more customers to speed up their product time to market, but we also want to grow the U.S. supply chain so that we can serve a larger customer base,” she added. “Because of that reciprocal relationship, if they grow, we grow.”

In the case of Droplet, instead of a monthslong, back-and-forth process with local machine shops, Droplet can go to Factorem’s site and get a quote in under a minute. Droplet uploads a design, and Factorem uses generative artificial intelligence to get a price and timeline based on previous orders. Factorem also uses automation to match up the product with a manufacturer with experience in that area.

“We easily got 5 to 6 points of gross margin improvement just from switching vendors,” Klotsche said. “It’s managing one vendor on a platform versus emailing 20 different ones.”

Including Droplet, Factorem now has 10 U.S. buyers. Zhang said her company is bringing several suppliers on board as well.

Though there are similar companies, namely Fictiv and the publicly traded Xometry, Factorem is the only firm to hone in the Southeast Asian supply chain, Zhang said. 

Because several countries make up the region, with different languages and business practices, the area has proven difficult to gain broad access to. Most other custom manufacturing streamliners use China, the U.S. or Mexico — something the ongoing trade war will make more costly.

“Our competitors in the U.S. are 10, 12, 14 years ahead of us,” she said. “But none of them have been able to successfully conquer Southeast Asia.”

Zhang said Factorem posted $400,000 in revenue in 2023 and between $800,000 and $1 million in 2024. It takes 20% to 30% of each transaction from fees on both the buyer and supplier side. She said the company is tracking to be profitable by the end of this quarter.

In the three years since the site went live, Factorem has grown to 150 suppliers in Southeast Asia and 150 buyers across the globe. The U.S. now makes up nearly half of its sales, even though Factorem entered the market just 10 months ago.

“If you’re a small organization in Colorado doing $10 (million) to $20 million in sales and you’re selling in the U.S. with suppliers in the U.S., you may not realize you have access to a global supply chain that can save you a lot of money,” Klotsche said.