The www.quotable.tech platform launched six weeks ago and in that time, almost 600 businesses have signed up, with, according to company, the vast majority being printers. Circa 150 jobs have so far been placed on the service.
The London based company was founded by chief executive Matthew Anstiss, a designer who has worked in print for the past seven years, and chief technology officer Reece Wood, a software engineer who has worked for a number of leading financial institutions.
The Quotable service works on a subscription model. The site breaks down the print sector into around 100 product types, with printers subscribing to receive notifications of jobs by product type.
It's free for buyers to post jobs on the site, the service then sends notifications to suppliers that have subscribed to the relevant product type. The supplier then quotes directly to the customer for the job.
Printers can register for free on the site and upload a profile, but to receive notifications they need to subscribe. Suppliers can subscribe to as many or as a few product types as they wish. Prices start at around 99p per month for a single product type, rising to £99 per month to receive notifications of every job posted.
Buyers can also add their own suppliers.
"Basically we can cut out the middleman and don’t take a commission,” said Anstiss.
He stressed that the platform was not a reverse auction site, as prices are only seen by the buyer.
“It’s not about beating down prices, or screwing people into the ground we’re just taking out the middleman, and giving people a fair opportunity to compete for work and contact each other without suppliers having to spend a fortune on SEO or Google to get in front of potential customers.”
Once buyers have placed a job and the notifications are sent to potential suppliers, the buyers and suppliers then liaise directly.
If a supplier’s quote doesn’t win a job, the system then feeds back as to why.
“We have automated feedback on, for example, that you were seventh out of 10 on pricing or second on timing, or whatever the criteria highlighted by the buyer. Effectively our back end algorithm will start telling them where they’re most competitive to help them,” said Anstiss.
“We want to make sure that suppliers are informed on where they’re winning and why not, getting feedback is important for any business and it really adds value for the suppliers.”
Anstiss said that new features are continually being added to the site.
“It’s growing all the time and the more we grow the more we learn, we’re only six weeks old and we’ve already learned a lot and by working with buyers and suppliers in partnership we will learn even more.”
While the platform serves as a marketplace for a wide range of bespoke products and services, not purely print, Anstiss said that the print sector in particular had embraced the concept.
“It obviously lends itself to the print industry, and now we’re even getting printers using it for their own print management to expand their services, so it goes up and down the chain,” he said.
“The interesting thing is that because we seem to have had so much traction in the print industry, nearly 70% of our enquiries have been print related, we’re now tackling that as our first big vertical market.”
Anstiss and Wood are now in the process of securing circa £500,000 in additional funding from venture capitalists and angel investors.
“We really want to scale fast and take on the print market, it’s incredibly exciting and it's gone crazy with print.”
