Quick reminder: We are starting our crowdfunding marketing, targeting the general public, this week. Quite a few of our previous investors from 2017 have reinvested and if that's you, I would like to thank you for doing so! If you are following us and have plans to invest but haven't had the chance yet, please do so this week. The discounted terms for the early bird investors will close as soon as the funding limit is reached.
Now to the update!
I went to New York City last Monday to sit down with our contact from Dun and Bradstreet. My mission was to obtain full access to their database in order to improve the reliability of our score. The meeting was a great success as they agreed to all of my requests and are willing to provide that access for FREE!
For example, consider the value of a using a PayDex score to determine how well a company pays their vendors which could provide a warning sign that a company is likely to cheat their customers. Also Suits, Liens and Judgement to tell us if they may be experiencing legal problems. We can also look into the ownership structure of the company and see if they are connected to any problem companies or were an executive in a company which has committed fraud or filed for bankruptcy. We can also check executives themselves on several blacklists around the world used by financial institutions when performing their KYC due diligence. All of this will come to us at no extra charge, so this is an important step forward in creating more reliable company trade reputation reports on Tradefox.
We will also be receiving a valuable data refresh when our contract renews in January. In this refresh we are going to remove the bulk of the 27,000 Chinese companies as China has almost completely stopped importing scrap materials. We will replace those with companies which we determine to be active traders & brokers. This is one of our target segments for new customers, so its important to have as many of them in our system as possible.
We are shifting our market focus for sales and marketing from the US to Asia and the Middle East. We have spent several months working with a US market focus, but have determined that the real demand for our product is not in the West as previously assumed. It took us some time to figure out why this is the case, but we have determined that as the risk is borne almost exclusively by the importers in Asia and the Middle East for shipments out of the EU and US and the data set we have access to via Dun & Bradstreet is much better on Western companies, the most sensible plan is to approach importers (buyers) with our product.
The survey and testing process we completed just this month have made us very confident that this is the best decision. Our emails to a global audience has a 10% click rate with US customers. All others are outside the US and roughly half are from Asia and the Middle East. The most convincing information comes from our chats and phone conversations with these buyers. We are getting a lot of very positive feedback and most importantly we are getting sign ups. Some are even signing up themselves without a salesperson reaching out to them and going for our Plus plan at $125 a month instead of Basic. All very encouraging points!
I am currently interviewing for a new sales person to work along side of me in our Amsterdam office. If you want to refer someone to me please let me know today.
Thanks so much for your investment! Feel free to reach out with advice, ideas or questions anytime.
Chris Yerbey, founder and CEO
[email protected]
+1 (404) 512-1742 (US Mobile)
+31 6 5392 8886 (Dutch Mobile and WhatsApp Line)
* Photo of Brendan Jones (left) and Chris Yerbey at the Recycling and Waste Management Expo in Birmingham, England - Sept 11, 2019.