The average tradesman spends a significant portion of every job in their van, going to the merchant in search of supplies – sometimes as much as 30 per cent of a builder’s working day.
A new mobile application for iPhone and Android users, launching this week in London, aims to save contractors time and money.
Buildiro was built and tested by builders and will be available in the Google Play and Apple App stores. It finds building supplies near any job site, and will eventually give builders real-time access to merchants’ inventories. With more than 500,000 products in its menu, the app will be officially launched with a Facebook Live event at 10am on Saturday 2nd March.
“We created Buildiro to reduce the time that builders spend searching for supplies, and to help smaller, offline merchants get online,” said Buildiro founder and CEO Luke Polach. “Many of the smaller building-supply stores in London – as elsewhere – don’t have an online shop, and contractors cannot see what these sellers offer without visiting. Buildiro was designed to give local merchants better online visibility, and in the process, improve the efficiency of independent contractors.”
For any builder, three factors affect the materials supply chain: availability, distance from the job site, and price. Large contractors often have teams to navigate the supply hurdles, but most small and medium-sized firms do not. That’s where Buildiro aims to help. Using the app, an independent tradesman can create a list of needed supplies and search for the closest merchant stocking all of the items.
The first phase of the Buildiro app release will be for builders and merchants in Greater London postcodes, where Buildiro staff will be working with merchants to help them connect inventories to the app’s database. By mid-2019, Buildiro will be rolled out in other cities across the United Kingdom, and eventually, worldwide.
