The online marketplace that takes all the hassle out of finding the best event suppliers.
Business overview
Location | London, United Kingdom |
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Social media | |
Website | www.addtoevent.co.uk |
Sectors | Content & Information Digital B2B |
Company number | 09342225 |
Incorporation date | 5 Dec 2014 |
Idea
Introduction
Add to Event takes all of the hassle out of finding the best suppliers for your event.
Our online marketplace solves the frustration of finding, calling and emailing dozens of event suppliers only to find that many aren’t available, out of your price range or can’t provide what you need.
Simply tell us your requirements and we do all of the hard work. We reach out to the relevant suppliers in your area and provide you with personalised quotes from those that are available and well suited to your event.
With each quote you can see key supplier info, trusted reviews, certifications and website links so you can view all of the information required to make an informed decision. In addition, our review system means that suppliers you choose through Add to Event are rewarded for doing a great job and held accountable for poor service or no-shows.
Intended impact
We're aiming to enable anyone, anywhere to organise amazing events with ease.
We’re building the only platform you should need to find suppliers for all of the important events and celebrations in your life; from marquee hire for your wedding to catering for your 30th birthday and entertainment for your children’s parties.
From a supplier point of view we’re helping businesses to flourish by providing an affordable and regular stream of new business. Unlike search engines we allow the best businesses to rise to the top based on reviews and accreditation rather than their budget or marketing expertise.
Substantial accomplishments to date
Add to Event was created by two brothers who became frustrated by the difficulties of finding suppliers for a mini festival. Having worked together running a digital agency they decided to use their skills to build the solution to this problem.
With limited time and no external investment it has now flourished into a fast-growing platform, with loyal customers and an experienced team to support and grow the platform.
Substantial accomplishments include:
- Built a complete marketplace system that allows users to receive quotes for over 150 different services and enables suppliers to secure new business
- Created an established revenue model
- 3,000+ registered businesses
- 50,000+ unique visitors per month
- 5,000+ average requests per month over the last 5 months.
- 500+ trusted reviews
- Accepted onto the Paypal Startup Blueprint program
- Had companies such as the BBC, Talk Talk and Accenture using the site for corporate events
Monetisation strategy
Our primary revenue stream comes from charging event suppliers in two ways:
1. Pay per quote system
2. Premium subscription
The pay per quote system is a popular method used by many local service marketplaces where the final service is delivered offline. The model scales well as the more quality leads we generate the more revenue we should be able to bring in. It also allows us to scale through paid marketing as it allows us to calculate a clear ROI on each campaign we run.
Suppliers on our site can access our database of event requests and currently pay £1 if they choose to respond to a request.
Our professional plan costs between £10 and £30 per month and includes a monthly credit allowance, enhanced profile and access to more leads as well as access to features such as Quote Templates.
As the business evolves we also see potential revenue streams through related services. We recently set up our first commercial partnership of this nature with a specialist events insurance firm.
Use of proceeds
Add to Event is now a healthy marketplace with sustainable acquisition channels on both sides and a proven revenue model. We’re now raising capital to accelerate our growth.
We plan to use the investment in three main areas:
1. GROW OUR CUSTOMER SUCCESS TEAM
We’re currently on-boarding on average 70 new suppliers per week. With an additional team member we are aiming to reach our goal of 7000 suppliers within the next 12 months.
2. INCREASE TRAFFIC THROUGH SEO AND PAID CHANNELS
We have had great success through natural search and we plan to build on this by investing in content and implementing further improvements to the site. In addition to this we plan to start to test paid channels to find campaigns where we can achieve a positive ROI.
3. PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
After talking to hundreds of users and event suppliers we have lots of plans for new features and changes we want to make to the product that we believe will increase engagement on the site and drive up revenue.
This is our first round of equity investment. The company has outstanding long term debt of £24,000, none of the proceeds of investment are intended to be used to repay this.
Market
Target market
Being a marketplace, Add to Event has two target audiences. These are people organising events (event organisers) and companies and individuals offering their services for events (suppliers).
REQUESTING SERVICES
People request services for a wide range of events from birthday parties to weddings to large corporate dos. Whilst we have many professional event organisers using the site we empower anyone planning an event to gain access to our database of thousands of event suppliers.
EVENT SUPPLIERS
Event suppliers are businesses offering their services for events, including equipment hire, entertainment and catering. These range from small local suppliers, such as a local farm offering a hog roast service, to large nationwide suppliers.
Characteristics of target market
The UK events industry currently contributes over £39 billion to the UK economy with an estimated 25,000 businesses and over 530,000 staff serving these events.
In addition there are also thousands of individuals and sole traders offering event services throughout the UK.
In terms of demand, the addressable market can be broken down by the type of event:
These markets are huge, to give an example of just three of the biggest:
Marketing strategy
So far we have had success on the demand side through SEO and referrals. We received over 60,000 visits in September which generated around 4700 requests.
Whilst investing further in these methods we also plan to start to run paid marketing through Adwords and affiliate partnerships.
On the supply side we are currently gaining an average of 10 new suppliers a day through referrals and email marketing. We are aiming to gain an additional 4000 suppliers within the next 12 months.
Competition strategy
For suppliers we offer a low-risk and cost-effective method of gaining new business and are seeing users shift budget towards our platform from other channels.
There are a number of other ways to find event suppliers which include search engines, traditional directories, agencies, wedding portals and local service marketplaces. We feel the main ways in which we differentiate ourselves are:
WE’RE EVENT SPECIALISTS
We’re not just a directory of local service providers or a specialist website only used for a single occasion in your life. For example people will only use a wedding site once (hopefully!) whilst with Add to Event they can plan their wedding and then use their account for future events such as their 30th birthday, parents anniversary, work socials and children’s parties.
Similarly, suppliers are attracted to paying to use a single service that will provide their bookings year round from a variety of different types of events.
CUSTOMER FOCUSED PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
We are an incredibly product focused company. The founders previously ran a digital agency and know exactly what it takes to build effective digital products.
We feel our website is the easiest and most enjoyable to use website to find event suppliers. Over 60% of our visits are from a mobile device. We’ve created a responsive website and paid a lot of attention to ensure that using the website on a phone is a blissfully simple experience.
We’re constantly looking at new ways to evolve the product and collaborate closely with suppliers to look at different ways we can help them to gain more business.
A TRUSTED MARKETPLACE
We are growing a trusted marketplace that rewards suppliers who deliver great services and helps event organisers to choose suppliers based on quality and reliability rather than on price alone.
We request reviews for every confirmed booking.This allows us to maintain a high number of accurate reviews compared to traditional directory websites that allow reviews that aren’t linked to a confirmed booking and are therefore more open to manipulation.
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