Bay Supply, a go-to source for fastening products for manufacturers and distributors, recently launched an innovative new eCommerce platform — and one of the first B2B vertical marketplaces to serve the fastening industry.
Bay Supply is an online marketing division of Bay Fastening Systems and a key part of the Bay Marketing Network, serving the global industrial supply marketplace.
As a unique B2B vertical niche marketplace for fasteners, Bay Supply plans to offer free registration at baysupply.com for users to access automated workflows and team dashboards to help buyers and sellers transact business more efficiently.
“The fastener industry is fragmented and outdated. The industry needs a better way to leverage technology to streamline quote and order processes,” explained Clifford Bernard, president and CEO of Bay Supply.
“Sourcing fasteners requires an incredible amount of time and research online. The current process — multiple websites are sourced, contact us requests, email submissions to multiple vendors, and multiple phone conversations — just doesn’t make sense for anyone in the supply chain anymore. Everyone is chasing the supply, and Bay Supply solves this problem by bringing the supply to the buyers,” he added.
One of the new platform’s highlights is an RFQ workflow that auto-populates part specifications to streamline the submission process. Buyers can quickly create RFQs and specify category or brand-specific requirements. The quote requests are automatically syndicated to the relevant suppliers that meet their procurement requirements with a single click.
Bay Supply offers free registration to distributors that sell fastening products within the more than 2,000 identified categories set up on the platform including various types of rivets, bolts, threaded inserts, and other fastener products and tools.
The company will also work with distributors to add new categories to better position their product offerings. Each distributor receives an online profile that is leveraged for SEO through online search engines and the Bay Supply Marketplace. Bay Supply provides free use of the platform and all the automated workflows, including multiple team dashboards. Buyers and sellers can communicate using cross-communication modules to help them do business.
In addition to serving distributors and buyers, Bay Supply places a strong emphasis on recruiting fastening product manufacturers.
“Fastening manufacturers are building their digital catalogs for their brands on their corporate websites. This is an absolute necessity to maintain brand integrity and loyalty with their customers, but they’re only reaching a small percentage of the buyer community with limited exposure,” Bernard said. “Manufacturers need to present their brands and the unique value their products bring to an application, and they need to do this where their competition is.”
Bay Supply provides a consistent and complete branding experience for fastening product manufacturers before, during, and after every sale transaction.
Although access is free to all users, Bay charges a small fee to sellers for all successful sales transactions on the platform. Bay uses the majority of collected success fees to fund continued software enhancements for users, to cover integration costs with third-party services and to expand digital marketing exposure for the platform and all of its participants.
Filed Under: Screws • nuts • bolts • rivets