Mar­vin Mar­celle, man­ag­er di­rec­tor, Triniquotes.com, is cer­tain that the pro­cure­ment Web site would change the way busi­ness­es and com­pa­nies do pro­cure­ment in T&T and pos­si­bly the Caribbean. "Trinidad is like the mi­ni-Mi­a­mi of the Caribbean where peo­ple from all over come to do busi­ness. A Web site like this would help T&T and the Caribbean. There are Web sites like this in Eu­rope and the Unit­ed States that help com­pa­nies source and ac­cess sup­pli­ers," he said. "It can change the way busi­ness is done in T&T. This is a cor­po­rate Web site de­signed to help busi­ness to busi­ness trans­ac­tions." Triniquotes.com is a pro­cure­ment Web site that elim­i­nates com­pa­nies hav­ing to man­u­al­ly call or search for a va­ri­ety of sup­pli­ers.

Us­ing this Web site, a com­pa­ny can ac­cess in­for­ma­tion on of­fice equip­ment, in­dus­tri­al sup­plies or mar­ket­ing ser­vices and oth­er goods or ser­vices from a list of sup­pli­ers for each cat­e­go­ry which is au­to­mat­i­cal­ly gen­er­at­ed.

Mar­celle recog­nised that buy­ers can save time and mon­ey if they have ready ac­cess to sup­pli­er and price in­for­ma­tion from a sin­gle source. He said Triniquotes.com was cre­at­ed to al­low buy­ers to quick­ly and eas­i­ly re­ceive mul­ti­ple price quotes from re­li­able sup­pli­ers that sell prod­ucts they want. "Buy­ers can go to the Web site and se­lect any of the 100-plus cat­e­gories list­ed, view the list of sup­pli­ers per cat­e­go­ry and re­quest a free price quote. With­in 24 hours, buy­ers will re­ceive mul­ti­ple price quotes in their e-mail in­box­es," he said.

Some of the cat­e­gories of sup­pli­ers in­clude: of­fice chairs, desks, file cab­i­nets, of­fice cu­bi­cles. In­dus­tri­al and safe­ty sup­plies: air com­pres­sors, el­e­va­tors and fire ex­tin­guish­ers. In­sur­ance ser­vices: au­to in­sur­ance, busi­ness in­sur­ance, crit­i­cal ill­ness planssss, health in­sur­ance and mar­ket­ing ser­vices, e-mail mar­ket­ing ser­vices, news­pa­pers ad­ver­tis­ing and so­cial me­dia mar­ket­ing. Mar­celle told the Busi­ness Guardian on Mon­day that he got the idea to launch such a ser­vice from work­ing as an in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy man­ag­er at a fi­nan­cial com­pa­ny in Port-of-Spain. "At the fi­nan­cial com­pa­ny I worked at, we would or­der let us say, ten com­put­ers and we had to look for dif­fer­ent sup­pli­ers and many times, we were un­aware of sup­pli­ers that would have of­fered cheap­er prices. This Web site gives a wide ar­ray of sup­pli­ers in many dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories," he said.

He said too many com­pa­nies waste time and re­sources in search­ing for the right sup­pli­er. "In the pur­chase de­ci­sion process, buy­ers can spend over 60 per cent of the time search­ing for sup­pli­er in­for­ma­tion and eval­u­at­ing the pur­chase op­tions. Search­ing for sup­pli­er in­for­ma­tion is time-con­sum­ing. Un­der these cir­cum­stances, it is like­ly that poor in­for­ma­tion or no in­for­ma­tion is ob­tained. Poor in­for­ma­tion may com­pro­mise the eval­u­a­tion process, lead­ing to a bad pur­chase and high­er trans­ac­tion cost," Mar­celle said. The Web site is free, but Mar­celle in­tends to soon charge sup­pli­ers a sub­scrip­tion fee. "At the mo­ment, sup­pli­ers do not pay any­thing, but we will be charg­ing them an an­nu­al fee of $1,500. We are hop­ing to do this with­in 30 to 60 days." He said Cari­com na­tion­als come to T&T to pro­cure good and ser­vices and a Web site like his will help to fa­cil­i­tate busi­ness be­tween T&T and the re­gion. "This Web site is open to peo­ple from all over the Caribbean to T&T who come to trade and buy goods and ser­vices here and need the best prices from sup­pli­ers."

Cap­i­tal for start-up

The com­pa­ny has raised more than $200,000 cap­i­tal as of Jan­u­ary 2012. The mon­ey came from Mar­celle's own pock­et. Triniquotes.com was orig­i­nal­ly launched in March 2010, achiev­ing an av­er­age of 4,610 pages per views per month. Mar­celle said the Web site has 275 reg­is­tered sup­pli­ers, 550 reg­is­tered buy­ers and a 0.5 per cent con­ver­sion rate of vis­i­tors to new ac­counts. "Right now that is good but, even­tu­al­ly, we want more. There are an av­er­age of 200,000 hits on the Web site a month, but hits do not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly trans­late in­to sales," he said. Mar­celle said 90 per cent of the per­sons who vis­it Triniquotes.com view oth­er pages. That said, he is look­ing for strate­gic part­ner­ships.

"Our strate­gic re­la­tion­ships will take the form of da­ta shar­ing with com­pa­nies that gen­er­ate sup­pli­er list­ings and spon­sor­ships to build bar­ri­ers of en­try for our com­pe­ti­tion. Triniquotes.com's mar­ket­ing ef­forts will be di­rect­ed to­ward ex­e­cut­ing the com­pa­ny strat­e­gy of cus­tomer ac­qui­si­tion. "On the sup­pli­er side, the com­pa­ny will hire sales­per­sons with ex­pe­ri­ence in sell­ing busi­ness di­rec­to­ry ser­vices to build the reg­is­tered sup­pli­er base. "On the buy­er side, the com­pa­ny will em­ploy tra­di­tion­al and dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing strate­gies to tar­get in­di­vid­ual and busi­ness buy­ers to be­come users of the ser­vice. Most of the mar­ket­ing ex­pens­es is ex­pect­ed to be spent in the ac­qui­si­tion of buy­ers," he said. "In T&T, we need mass mar­ket­ing to change the cul­ture of how we do things," Mar­celle said.