Service Seeking
Service Seeking is an online marketplace that offers quotes and price comparison services to consumers and businesses.
History
Jeremy Levitt, Oliver Pennington and Daniel Sabados co-founded Service Seeking in 2007, with the launch of ServiceSeeking.com.au. Levitt and Pennington are joint chief executive officers of Service Seeking, and Sabados is the company's chief technology officer. The company's chairman is Anthony Klok, a former chief executive and director of Betfair Australia and former head of business development for James Packer's Crown.
While working as a property lawyer at Allens Arthur Robinson, Levitt noticed that firms were constantly quoting to win work through competitive tenders, and at his first business, PodProperty, an online legal service provider which specialises in co-ownership agreement, Levitt got frustrated when trying to organise tradespeople for jobs. This gave him the idea to start ServiceSeeking.com.au with Pennington and Sabados. It was reported that Levitt says "We thought there was a real opportunity to create a paradigm shift in the way people researched and hired service businesses."
It was reported that when Service Seeking was first launched in 2007 in Australia, it concentrated on building customers, utilising online marketing and search engine optimisation; it avoided major advertising campaign and heavy brand building until July 2012. Service Seeking was reported to be growing during the global financial crisis of 2007â08, but with increasing costs.
Services and products
Service Seeking provides online services market platform for consumers and businesses to trade. The websites of Service Seeking enable consumers to list their jobs and allow businesses to bid for the jobs. This drives down the true value of the trades and services so consumers are able to get work done at well below cost. Most jobs are cash jobs so this drives the prices down even further meaning trades and services are completed to a substandard quality. Their popular job categories include accounting, building, graphic design, photography and furniture removal. As at September 2012, Service Seeking has a staff of about 50 and it has plans to hire about 30 more staff. Its customer support desk with 35 staff members runs for 12 hours everyday. It has over 500,000 users as at September 2012, with more than AUD350 million worth of jobs completed through its websites since 2007, and over 22,000 jobs a month were being posted as at September 2012, with businesses submitting more than 60,000 quotes a month.
ServiceSeeking.com.au
ServiceSeeking.com.au was launched in October 2007. It is a tendering website, primarily for jobs in building, construction and household trades, including plumbing, electrical services and concreting. It permits only local traders with an Australian Business Number to register. To explain why it registers only local traders, the co-founder Jeremy Levitt was reported to have said that "We have taken the view that we don't want overseas businesses on our site, because we don't want to drive prices down."
Data collection, pricing guides and market surveys
Service Seeking collects pricing data from the quotes submitted on its websites and uses it to provide pricing guides. From the data that Service Seeking collects, it also conducts surveys of industries and markets. Some reported pricing guides and industry or market surveys initiated by Service Seeking include:
- [November 2012] The Australian Services Buyers Guide 2012 published by ServiceSeeking.com.au gives customers an idea of how much money home renovation costs to possibly avoid overpriced quotes from tradespeople.
- [July 2011] Survey of 1100 quotes found that renovating costs were lowest in the north and highest in the east of Melbourne.
- [November 2010] Survey of more than 70,000 business service quotes covering the average costs for a range of business services showed that clients may be paying too much.
- [September 2010] Survey of the names of over 28,000 small businesses to see if those with the most unusual names were winning the most tenders found that humorously named businesses that quote well and follow up with clients are more successful.
- [May 2010] Trade and Household Services Pricing Guide produced from the survey of more than 70,000 quotes submitted between October 2007 and March 2010 on ServiceSeeking.com.au showed that the average hourly prices of tradesmen in Victoria were 4.6 per cent cheaper than in New South Wales and 5.2 per cent friendlier than Queensland, making the cost of building and renovating to be most expensive in Queensland and cheapest in Victoria.
- [March 2009] A research by Service Seeking found that haggling activity on ServiceSeeking.com.au had increased by 42 per cent in the first quarter of the year, compared with the last quarter of 2008.
Financing
In its first year of operations, Service Seeking did not charge for its services. It now earns revenue from membership fees paid by businesses. The capital for starting the business came from the co-founders and their families and friends; a venture capital fund that had committed to the business went under, and to keep Service Seeking from going under, they applied for a Research and Development grant and negotiated extended payment terms with suppliers. They later raised enough money from their current chairman, Anthony Klok to grow the business, develop their revenue model and eventually break even.
Affiliations
In 2009, Service Seeking partnered with TrueLocal to power TrueLocal's Get Quotes feature which allows consumers to post details of a job or service they need, with businesses competing for the work. Service seeking has alliance partnerships with Ninemsn, Yahoo!7, NRMA, eBay, TrueLocal, Realestate.com.au and RP Data.