Your product is a specification, not a SKU.
You don't make it and you don't stock it. A customer describes something, you spec it, you shop it to vendors who can build it, you mark it up, and you coordinate it from order to delivery. Packaging, promotional products, print, contract packaging, private label, store fixtures. The vocabulary differs but the work is the same, and almost nothing off the shelf is built for it.
Sound familiar?
The RFQ cycle lives in your inbox
Three vendors quoted, two replied, one changed their price on the phone. The comparison is in somebody's head or a spreadsheet they built this morning, and when the customer asks a week later, it gets rebuilt.
Repeat work is as slow as new work
Most of what you do is a rerun with different numbers. If quoting it again means copying the last one and deleting forty lines by hand, you're paying full price for work the system should already know how to do.
Margin is visible to people who shouldn't see it
When the margin is the product, cost has to be hidden from most of your own staff. Hiding a column on the screen doesn't really protect it, and anyone who has tried knows that.
Nothing exists between a spreadsheet and an enterprise suite
The big CRM platforms are priced per seat for sales organizations many times your size. You'd use a fraction of what they do, and you'd still be bending your process to fit theirs. Very little is built for the firms in between.
Your vendor knowledge isn't written down
Who can run that flute, who has that tooling, who ships to Canada without a fuss. That knowledge is worth real money, and it usually lives in two people's heads.
What we build for sourcing & brokerage
Inquiry to quote, in one thread
The whole cycle in one place: inquiry, RFQ out to vendors, pricing back, comparison, customer quote, order. Nothing has to be rebuilt, because nothing gets lost.
Vendor capability search
The terms you use to describe what each vendor can do, stored so you can search them instead of relying on memory. Who can make this, at this size, in this material, by this date.
Cost and margin, properly locked down
Who can see cost is controlled in the database itself, not just hidden on the screen. A salesperson sees the quantity being quoted and has no way to see what it costs you.
Repeat orders that behave like repeat orders
Duplicate a job, pick the lines you want, set the new quantities, and you're done. The system is built around reruns, because reruns are most of the business.
Releases, shipments and vendor-to-vendor freight
Blanket orders drawn down over months, shipments that never touch your building, freight riding on the tooling line. Handled properly instead of worked around.
Proof from your world
Two promises the software industry hates making
One monthly fee, starting at launch
Design, building, hosting and support in one monthly number you can budget like rent. No hourly billing, no change-order invoices, and no per-seat fees that grow with your team. Billing doesn't start until the first version is live and your team is using it.
See the plans →You own the custom code. All of it.
The account holding the code, the documentation and the hosting are in your name from day one. If you ever leave us, you take everything with you, and any developer can pick it up. You won't have to pay to get it back, rebuild it, or stay stuck on someone else's platform.
How we work →Questions we hear from sourcing & brokerage
How do we know whether this fits us?
One question sorts it out. When a customer asks you for a price, do you have to go and ask someone else first? If yes, this is built for a business like yours. If you quote from a price list you control, it isn't, and you want inventory and ecommerce software instead. Another sign: if you hide cost from some of your own staff, the hardest part of this is something we've already built.
We looked at the big CRM platforms. Why would custom be cheaper?
Usually because you'd be licensing a platform built for a sales organization many times your size, per seat, and using a small slice of it. The useful test is what you'd use day to day. If that's quoting, vendor comparison, margin and coordination, it makes more sense to build that than to move everything into a big platform, and the monthly cost stops growing with headcount.
Our process is pretty unusual. Is that a problem?
Usually that's the reason to build. Vendor-to-vendor shipping, freight on the tooling line, capability terms built up over decades. Packaged systems flatten exactly those things, and they tend to be where your margin comes from.
Can we keep our job numbers and our vocabulary?
Yes, and we'd push for it. Keeping your existing numbering, terminology and way of working means the new system feels like a faster version of the one your team knows, instead of a retraining project. We've done exactly this for a broker running on a system built in 2003.
What if we manufacture some of it ourselves?
Then part of what you need is shop-floor routing and scheduling, which is a different kind of system, and we'll tell you so. The sourcing and quoting half still fits. The production half needs a manufacturing execution system, and we'd rather point you to one than pretend otherwise.
Tell us what's slowing your business down.
In a free one-hour call we work out what the system needs to do and which plan it fits. Within two business days you have a written plan and a monthly number. No drawn-out proposals, no pressure.
One monthly fee · Built, hosted & improving · You own the custom code