MaterialsXchange (MX), an electronic marketplace for buying and selling raw materials, expanded its leadership team with two personnel appointments. The company announced Steve Voorhees has invested seed capital into the company and has joined the company’s board of directors and that John Mancine has been appointed as the company’s chief technology officer.
Voorhees is the co-founder Voorhees Partners, and MaterialsXchange represents the company’s first investment. Mancine began his professional software development career in the video game industry, with a focus on artificial intelligence and real-time systems.
“MaterialsXchange is extremely fortunate to have Steve Voorhees join our team,” Mike Wisnefski, CEO of MaterialsXchange, said in a news release. “Steve is well known for growing companies with the passion of an entrepreneur and the demeanor of an experienced executive.”
Voorhees brings over 40 years of experience in the adjacent paper, packaging, and energy trading businesses to MaterialsXchange. Most recently, Voorhees was CEO of WestRock, stepping down from that position due to health reasons.
“I have been impressed by the value proposition and technology of MaterialsXchange,” Voorhees said “MX management team brings highly applicable expertise from the lumber, commodity trading, and technology industries. MX is uniquely position to develop the digital marketplace for wood products, providing both buyers and sellers with greater price transparency.”
Mancine has previously worked for Dell Software in the Dell CTO Group, where he led engineering initiatives for the global experience design group. The new MX chief technology officer joined Peapod LLC in 2018 and helped launch Peapod Digital Labs, a common omnichannel e-commerce platform for all the brands at Ahold/Delhaize, one of the nation’s largest grocery retail groups. He served as director of frontend development for the $900 million per year e-commerce business and spearheaded dozens of engineering teams to deliver customer-facing and architectural improvements.
“John’s proven experience is perfectly suited to MaterialsXchange’s mission,” Wisnefski said. “He will have an immediate impact on our objective to continually improve the User experience. We are fortunate that he has joined the team.”
Mancine said he sees many opportunities to build on MX’s marketplace through “strategic technical solutions.”
“By bringing the MX product-centric technology in-house, the company is positioned to drive innovation and transcend customer needs and market demands,” Mancine said.
Chicago-based MaterialsXchange’s goal is to bring both the ease of an ecommerce solution and the sophistication of the modern capital markets to the lumber industry. The digital marketplace launched in 2019 and the first listing on the marketplace were wood products, specialty oriented strand board, European spruce lumber, and southern pine lumber. In 2020, the company partnered with Ravens Logistics as it expanded its product offerings to include rail freights.
