About Second Counter
Built from the work behind the sale.
Second Counter started with a pattern I could not ignore: good customers were ready to buy, good teams were working hard, and revenue was still disappearing in the space between a ringing phone, a quote, and the follow-up nobody had time to make.
— Anfii, founder
Where I started
I learned by building things people needed.
I started working in software at 16, freelancing on Fiverr. There was no polished roadmap. A client had a problem, I had to understand it, and then I had to make something that worked.
The projects changed constantly: chatbots, automations, scripts, APIs, and sometimes all of them tied together. That taught me to look past the software and understand the whole operation around it. Who is waiting? What gets missed? Where does the work slow down when the day gets busy?
I built my career by answering those questions with real systems, not slide decks.
The lesson that stayed
A sale can die without anybody doing anything wrong.
I later spent years building the quoting, follow-up, payment, and automation systems behind a US bulk-materials e-commerce business. I got close to the full path of an order, from the first question to the moment money changed hands.
What stayed with me was how often a sale disappeared for ordinary reasons. The phone rang while everyone was helping someone else. A quote went out, but the next call never happened. A customer was ready to move and heard silence at exactly the wrong moment.
The team was not lazy. The customer was not lost. The work simply had nowhere to go.
Why lumberyards
The independent yard should not have to become a chain to compete.
Independent lumberyards run on knowledge and relationships. The person behind the counter knows the contractor, the job, the material, and usually the problem before the customer finishes explaining it. That is hard to replace, and we do not want to replace it.
But a small counter team can only be in so many places at once. Calls come in while trucks are loading. Quote requests stack up. Open quotes age quietly. The biggest companies can throw headcount and software at that problem. An independent yard usually has to absorb it.
Second Counter is being built for that gap. It should work around the systems and habits a yard already trusts, pick up the repetitive work that gets dropped, and know when a real person needs to take over.
What we believe
Technology should carry the busywork, not erase the people who make the yard matter.
Where we want to go
Give the independent counter a fairer fight.
Independent yards keep local contractors moving. They carry generations of product knowledge, employ people in their communities, and answer the questions that never fit neatly into an online checkout. They deserve modern systems without being forced to operate like a national chain.
If we do this right, a slammed morning does not have to mean a lost customer. A quote does not disappear because nobody had five spare minutes to call. A small team can give better service without running itself into the ground.
I want Second Counter to help protect what makes independent yards worth choosing: the people, the judgment, and the trust built over years. Our job is to stand behind that counter quietly and carry the work that would otherwise fall.
That is the impact we are after. Not replacing the counter. Giving it another set of hands.
Tell us how it works at your yard