Member Article

North East tech business revolutionises online retailing

One of the North East’s best known businesswomen has launched an innovative digital service aimed at helping online retailers find reliable and trustworthy suppliers, saving them time and money.

Venstr.com, led by entrepreneur Siobhan Bales, is the only B2B ecommerce website of its kind in the UK. The business exists to solve a common concern for small and medium sized online retailers. They have no way of knowing how reliable new suppliers are before they use them, often leading to costly delays.

Built in-house at the company’s North Shields headquarters, Venstr takes its name from the ability for retailers to give vendors a star-rating. This means that prospective buyers will be able to make a more informed choice over where to source their goods and services.

Venstr has already been awarded Gold Partner status with PayPal and suppliers are taking advantage of the opportunity to connect with potential buyers. Almost 100 suppliers have registered their products and services across the site’s core set of categories, from fulfilment and shipping to web solutions and wholesale.

Uniquely, Venstr enables suppliers to list offers and deals aimed at buyers that are not available anywhere else and can only be redeemed via the site. Venstr’s founders believe that this will help to establish the service as the go-to place for reliable and cost-effective services.

North East entrepreneur Siobhan Bales set up Venstr with her business partner and husband Stephen Bales. Together they have created a number of ecommerce businesses and experienced first-hand the challenges associated with sourcing a reliable network of suppliers, in a sector that is seeing rapid growth.

The online retailing sector is one of the fastest growing sectors across the world. The UK, Germany and France account for 71 per cent of total European online sales* and UK SMEs are increasingly trading online.

There has been a 42 per cent increase in the number of small businesses selling their products online. Meanwhile the number of start-ups that began trading exclusively online increased by 32 per cent in 2013 compared to the year before.**

Siobhan Bales said: “Following many years of thinking and planning, we successfully secured seed investment in 2014 to create Venstr. It is the UK’s first ecommerce network where online retailers can find quality deals and services from star-rated suppliers.

“Our vision was to bring together specialist suppliers with online retailers to help deliver better customer service, value and quality for online retailers, as well as grow leads and sales for suppliers on the platform. We know all too well how hard it is for small and medium sized businesses to find suppliers they can trust, especially if they’re using them for the first time.

“Venstr is built on star-ratings and peer reviews and that is the key to building a reliable and trustworthy online community that people come back to.

“We have built the Venstr platform from scratch, following years of careful planning and designing. The unique deals section is particularly exciting because suppliers can market themselves to a captive audience and retailers can save time and money. It’s a win win.”

Siobhan Bales has extensive experience working across the enterprise and small business agenda. She has fulfilled appointments as a government advisor to the enterprise and skills team at the Department for Business Innovation and Skills and a two-year tenure as an expert in entrepreneurial communications for an EU board in Brussels.

She has also held various non-executive director positions on enterprise and small business boards in the North East region such as Business Enterprise Group, Young Enterprise and The Prince’s Trust.

She added: “The North East is a great place to start an innovative new business like this. It reflects the entrepreneurial spirit across the region and the growing expertise in the tech sector. We are proud to launch a digital service here that is already being used all over the UK, Europe and the US.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Finlay Magowan .