Compare Quotes From Local Irish Businesses Online and Save Thousands.

BRAY, Ireland - Sept. 19, 2013 - PRLog -- Summary:
Work. It's often hard to find, and if you have it to give, it can be a pain finding the right person to do it. New Wicklow-based startup Quotefish solves this problem by providing consumers and businesses with a new marketplace that instantly emails local businesses whenever someone requires their services.

Details:

The incredible growth of the internet in the last few years has seen us change a lot of our habits. Shopping online, booking flights, holidays and accommodation over the internet, and socialising with our friends on Facebook and Twitter have all become part of everyday life for the majority of us. Now, the way we research and find local tradesmen and businesses and the way they reach us is about to change too.

Up until now, if you needed someone to mow your lawns, clean your windows, take photos at your wedding, or DJ at your party, you had to grab the phone book and telephone a few businesses to get quotes and information before deciding on someone. This took time, cost money, and didn’t always guarantee you were getting the right business for the job.

Then you have businesses. Let’s say you’ve decided to start your own business, you already run your own little side venture, or you’ve been your own boss for a long time now and would like more customers. Until recently the only way to reach people was through advertising - the expensive, hit and miss method of getting your business name out there and into the wild. It could cost hundreds or thousands to get your advert amongst other similar businesses in the classified section of the back of the local newspaper, or to get a radio advert produced and played on your local radio station, or a small space advert in the Golden Pages. The problem is, you had to sit and wait until someone finds and calls you, so there was no way of knowing if your investment was working for you.

Quotefish aims to solve these problems by allowing people to post their work request once online for free and reach numerous local businesses. At the same time, it gives those businesses the opportunity to be alerted to these postings via email so they can quote on the work and contact the customer if they want to.

Businesses simply sign up to Quotefish once using a simple form, providing their details and selecting their categories and service area (which is restricted to within the business's own country), and are then given 10 free credits to try out the service. When a consumer posts a work request on Quotefish, relevant businesses are alerted instantly by email and have the option of acting on the lead by spending a few credits to quote on the work and receive the consumer's contact details.

"Once those free credits are used they can then be topped up with paid ones. It's an incredibly cheap way to target your spend on those consumers you want to reach,” says founder Simon Chapman.

For individuals, Quotefish takes the pain away from finding local businesses. Instead of wasting time ringing around for quotes and dealing with disinterested businesses, they can simply visit Quotefish and post their work for free with a simple online form, instantly alerting any number of local relevant businesses who then have the option of directly contacting the consumer.

The idea for Quotefish was born when Simon Chapman arrived in Ireland from Sydney, Australia in 2009 with his homesick Irish wife.

"I'd left a job in Sydney as a Senior Art Director, arriving with the misconception that Dublin had a strong advertising presence, similar to London. At the time Ireland had the third highest rate of unemployment in the EU and no one had any full-time design jobs anywhere. Despite this, people were still getting married, running their businesses, and selling their products, so although I knew there was a market out there for my design services, I had no way of reaching these people," he explains.

“At the same time, a friend of ours had bought her first home in Dublin and needed a painter, plumber, tiler, and some rubbish removed. She would often speak of the trouble she had finding good local businesses to do the work. This inspired me to find a solution for both our needs in Ireland, and sadly, there was no perfect fit. So I started designing Quotefish,” Simon continues.

"Businesses who join Quotefish initially get €10 worth of free credits to try out the service, and it’s completely free for consumers to use. It's not as easy to launch a product when you have a double-sided market, but I really believe that Quotefish can help a lot of small businesses, sole traders, and skilled unemployed find customers and start earning money without outlaying cash for advertising and marketing, while also making it really easy for consumers to reach these businesses," he says.

Being an early stage startup, Simon reached out to Bill Liao for advice and was invited to participate in SOS Ventures and Intercall's first SELR8R sales accelerator program in Cork (www.selr8r.com) in February.

"We love businesses that fulfill a need and can scale. Quotefish solves a real-world, everyday need," says Bill.

Although originally intended for Ireland, Simon soon realised that there was a much larger market for a solution like Quotefish.

"There are people all over the world who would use a service like this. ‘Support local business’ is a term that resonates in any language, and in these times it makes sense to give work to, and get work from the people in your neighbourhood," Simon says.

A recent global survey held by the company showed that over 70% of consumers and businesses liked the idea of Quotefish and would use it.

Quotefish is free to join and is currently offering businesses a bonus 5 free credits if they use the code “COMPARE” when signing up at www.quotefish.com.