Finding The Right Buyer or Seller: Generic Technology’s Disservice to Seafood, Part 1

How do you discover who is interested in what you have to buy or sell?

According to Dealboard’s research, if you are like 90% of seafood producers, processors and wholesalers – by far the majority of the industry – you rely on email communications and some texting to figure this out. It’s clear that technology has under-served the seafood industry, and this is yet another example. Email is an incredibly un-productive way to conduct the business of seafood transactions, for a host of reasons:

Email requires manual effort and copy/paste to construct, which takes time and introduces errors

To use email effectively for seafood offers, Dealboard often finds companies maintaining product and pricing information in Excel spreadsheets. They use this to copy-and-paste information into an email offer. But how do you know that all your buyers or sellers are working from the latest information? And, for each offer, there are always specific details that are unique to the offer and need to be filled in manually. It’s a cumbersome process in which mistakes happen. With email, you might accidentally communicate the wrong thing.

Your message easily gets lost in the noise

Seafood buyers and sellers typically receive 150 to 200 emails a day. If what you’re offering isn’t what they’re looking for at that moment, will they remember you an hour, a day, or a week later? They might. But it’s more than likely that your message will get lost and they will respond to someone else who offered them a similar product more recently than you did.

Email is unstructured, which makes it nearly impossible to find all the right opportunities

One way to find earlier emails is to search for them. But, search is problematic because email is unstructured and subject to semantic differences and input errors. Consider the following two offers, for identical product. If you were looking through the last few days of recent emails (hundreds, maybe thousands) to find offers for sole, you would want to find both of these:

They’re identical, but described differently. 

Various parts of the world refer to the same fish using different names, which is understandable (orange boxes). 

Luckily, we have the scientific name to use as a common means to identify a species of fish, however in one of the cases above the scientific name is misspelled (purple boxes). As Dealboard works with seafood companies around the globe, we uncover scientific name misspellings very frequently. 

Even standard codes such as FAO fishing areas can be referred to in different ways (green boxes). A human being can easily identify that both offers were caught in the same fishing area, but your generic email system wouldn’t.

If you were searching your inbox for recent offers for sole, none of the normal search terms you might use would show you both of these offers. You would miss one or the other, or both of these offers. That means missed opportunities for buyers and for sellers.

Moral of the story: 

A rose by any other name might smell as sweet… but you would never be able to locate it in your email inbox.

It's time for a new way to discover who is interested in what you have to buy or sell, which gets around the limitations of email.

Seafood Expos - Boston was Great; On to Barcelona

 

On the heels of a busy and promising Dealboard experience at Seafood Expo North America last week, we're preparing for something even bigger - the move of Seafood Expo Global from its longtime home of Brussels to the shores of the Mediterranean in Barcelona.

While we won't have a physical presence on the show floor, we wouldn't miss attending this first-ever event. We look forward to continuing there the conversations we've begun with many of you, and initiating new ones.

Since we're not anchored in one place it might be difficult to find us during the show... so we are offering to schedule meeting places and times in advance. Will you be at Barcelona? Let's meet up! Please send an email to info@dealboard.biz and we'll work something out.

News: Dealboard and Euler Hermes announce partnership to bring confidence to wholesale seafood transactions

Integration enables seafood producers, processors, wholesalers, exporters and brokers to manage credit insurance coverage while negotiating transactions

Dealboard, the global electronic seafood market, and Euler Hermes, the world's largest trade credit insurance company, announce a partnership to bring certainty, efficiency and ease to the process of buying and selling wholesale seafood. Trade credit insurance provided by Euler Hermes may now be easily accessed and managed through Dealboard’s e-commerce platform.

“Providing a fast and easy means to access trade credit insurance gives seafood suppliers assurance that they will get paid for goods they sell,” said Steve Engdahl, director, Dealboard. “Our customers want a simple user experience. Our integration with Euler Hermes delivers Dealboard customers a clean, simple and very efficient way to negotiate and transact with confidence.”

“Euler Hermes saw the opportunity to provide an additional level of protection and certainty to our policyholders transacting on the Dealboard platform,” said Aaron Lindstrom, regional head of partnerships, Euler Hermes North America. “Our integration with Dealboard eliminates extra manual steps or the need to pivot between multiple systems in order to finalize and insure seafood deals.”

Seafood producers, processors, wholesalers, exporters and brokers need to assess the creditworthiness of potential buyers. Now they may confirm or establish Euler Hermes trade credit insurance coverage for their trading parties as they negotiate transactions within Dealboard. Dealboard provides the tools and marketplace for finalizing transactions, insurance is offered by Euler Hermes, and Dealboard makes use of Euler Hermes APIs to bring credit insurance inquiries to the seller’s fingertips.

 

About Dealboard

Dealboard is the global electronic seafood market, a SaaS software platform for producers, processors, wholesalers, exporters and brokers of seafood. Dealboard brings transparency, traceability and efficiency to global food supply chains through communities of trust, making global electronic trading affordable, easy and seamless. Dealboard solutions undo fragmentation, eliminate factors which undermine trust, and level the playing field for vendors of all sizes and regions.

For more information, please visit www.dealboard.biz

 

About Euler Hermes

Euler Hermes is the global leader in trade credit insurance and a recognized specialist in the areas of surety, collections, structured trade credit and political risk. Headquartered in Paris, Euler Hermes is present in more than 50 countries with 5,800 employees. In 2020, Euler Hermes global business transactions represented 824 billion Euro in exposure. Euler Hermes is a full member of Allianz Group.

For more information, please visit www.eulerhermes.us

 

The Fox, The Henhouse and the Fish (Why independence matters in your e-commerce platform)

One of the reasons maintaining trusted relationships is so important to the seafood industry is the many disreputable parties who find a way into the seafood supply chain, looking for ways to game the system. Whether it’s IUU fishing, mislabeling, failure to deliver product or failure to pay, these actors work to their advantage and to the detriment of other industry participants. But the chances to be gamed don’t stop at these obvious factors.

There are so many steps in the seafood supply chain, that it’s difficult to preserve margin at each step in the process. Anything that disrupts seller-buyer dynamics is a threat. We all use our relationships and history to know who our trusted buyers and sellers are, versus others who might step in ahead or behind us in the supply chain but not add value. But are there ways a predatory party could lurk in and around your transaction process, undetected?

An important consideration here becomes the independence of your e-commerce platform. When choosing a platform and marketplace for negotiating wholesale seafood transactions, it’s critical to look beyond what the platform offers and who the trading counterparties are, to also understand who is backing the platform itself. Is the platform backed by a broker or seafood company you compete with or transact with? If so, think about the kind of information about your business that company could have access to – who you do business with, what you have available to buy or sell, the prices you’re getting, and more.

Marketplace platforms which aren’t independent are a perfect case of the fox guarding the henhouse… or in this case, guarding your fish.

For the record – Dealboard is an electronic seafood marketplace independent of any broker or competing seafood companies. We do not take a position in any transaction.

As a stand-alone company not affiliated with any broker or competing seafood company, using Dealboard is a way to preserve your business model, your proprietary information, your trusted relationships and your margin.

When is a fish like a bond? (How unique, really, is the seafood industry… Part 2)

In our last post, we concluded that the seafood industry had enough uniqueness that buying and selling seafood is not well served by the predominant industry-agnostic platforms, which among other things, spread information more widely than needed and compound issues associated with trust and relationships.

But, exactly how unique is the seafood industry? If it is truly one-of-a-kind, then addressing industry challenges will always be slow and expensive, since solutions must be bespoke one-offs, and the industry has only its own mistakes to learn from. If, on the other hand, the very characteristics of the seafood industry which render industry-agnostic platforms inappropriate happen to be shared by at least one other industry, then the seafood industry can benefit from lessons learned and successes achieved in that other industry.

We see useful similarities between wholesale seafood transactions and transactions in the securities markets. A fish doesn’t look like a bond, walk like a bond, or – fortunately – taste like a bond, but it might transact like a bond. Or sometimes like a stock. Or, other times, like a derivative.

How to Avoid Getting Gamed

In the stock markets, it doesn’t pay to spread information about your intentions to buy or sell too widely, especially if you have a large quantity to transact. In a world where the average trade size is a couple hundred shares, the company looking to sell a million shares has a tough job. Announcing an intent to sell that much will influence the supply/demand balance and make it impossible to get a good price. This applies to seafood too – rather than telling everyone what you have, it’s important to advertise only to those you have successfully transacted with before, and to advertise a small amount just to identify who’s interested, then go from there.

Know your Customer

In the stock market, one doesn’t need to know or care who is doing the buying or selling – every share is identical, and transactions are cleared through a central counterparty so it doesn’t matter who was on the other end of your transaction. But over-the-counter securities, particularly derivatives, don’t work that way. Like seafood transactions, they’re negotiated and arranged bilaterally and privately between two parties. Here also the securities industry provides “hints” on how to handle the situation – from rigorous customer due diligence and know-your-customer requirements, to risk hedging, credit insurance and other protections for both buyer and seller.

These and other techniques perfected in the securities markets can apply to seafood buying and selling – if the platform you’re using includes them. Generic platforms aren’t appropriate for buying and selling seafood, but when a fish is like a stock, a bond, or a derivative, then it pays to borrow from what’s been perfected elsewhere to benefit the seafood industry.

How unique, really, is the seafood industry? (Part 1)

When I’ve spoken at conference events in various locations around the world, I often receive a question about a topic which concerns the industry as a whole, but where the questioner is asking me to comment on the “uniquely X perspective” on a macro-level problem, where X is whatever city, state or country we’re in at that moment.

In many cases, there is a unique twist at a local level to what’s going on, and I’m happy to comment about the unique challenges a broader issue presents for a specific area.

But in other cases, macro-level issues of the world boil down to pretty much the same issues for local participants. For example, to the extent that the nation is dealing with inflation, and my home state of Massachusetts is dealing with inflation, then the dynamics for northeast Massachusetts vs. southeast Massachusetts, when it comes to inflation, aren’t necessarily all that unique. The issues are real, but the “unique” label is spurious.

This applies to different industries, too. At some fundamental level, lessons learned in one industry can be expressed in generic terms which apply directly to other industries. But at other levels, what works for one industry can’t be guaranteed to work in another. The trick is to detect when the “unique” label is valid and when it is spurious.

Today, let’s focus on e-commerce platforms. E-commerce serves a wide range of different industries. A number of really strong e-commerce platforms which are wildly successful across these different industries, for both retail and business-to-business transactions. Take a look at how Alibaba and Amazon Business are doing, for example.

But do these platforms address the unique needs of the seafood industry? As we speak with processors and wholesalers in the seafood industry who have tried platforms such as Alibaba, it’s clear the answer is no. Industry-agnostic platforms leave both buyers and sellers of seafood down in a few ways:

1. They spread information more widely than needed

When buying or selling in bulk, it’s important not to get “gamed” by sharing too much information with too many parties. This is one reason direct messaging technologies such as Skype, email and WhatsApp are so prevalent in the seafood industry. In a world where there are actors who do not intend to transact, but stalk e-commerce platforms to gather information, sharing too much puts you at a disadvantage and can lead you to get less than the best price for your transaction.

2. They compound issues associated with trust and relationships

We’ve written previously about the importance of knowing your counterparty, of building trust, and of maintaining relationships. On many e-commerce platforms, what you post is available to any buyer – whether you know them or not. It won’t help you manage and incentivize those with whom you have the closest trusted relationships, and to the extent you don’t know your buyer, you also don’t know your risk.

We’ve heard horror stories about both issues. So – while there’s a need for e-commerce in the seafood industry, it has enough uniqueness to demand an e-commerce platform which has been specifically tailored to the industry’s needs.

Has your firm tried industry-agnostic or seafood-specific platforms for buying or selling seafood? What has your experience been?

Check back after the holidays for a different take on this subject.

Seas, dinner plates, and everything in between: the certifiably complex state of traceability

Consumers want to buy seafood sourced through sustainable fishing practices. At least, they say they do when asked. As industry practitioners, we certainly want that, too. To position against sustainable fishing practices is like arguing with motherhood, baseball and apple pie.

There are many different and overlapping initiatives underway right now – all inspiring. The seafood industry is making great strides in sustainability and traceability, but it’s clear there is a lot more work to be done.

The current state of play is certification, where participants adopt practices to ensure sustainability according to documented standards and undergo audits and examinations in order to earn the right to advertise their product as processed per the standard. This is all well and good, and is a practice followed in other business domains too. It makes sense.

But, the certification game falls short of our industry’s aspirations, for two reasons –

1. We’re too good at it.

Certification is done with respect to a standard. In the seafood industry, there is no shortage of standards. And that’s the problem. In the words of a longtime friend, “I love standards, especially because there are so many of them." SeafoodSource offers an excellent guide to certifications and eco-labels. The fact that this guidebook – aimed at seafood industry insiders – fills 322 pages is indicative of the issue. We’re so good at creating new standards that we’ve built a maze we can barely sort out ourselves, much less expect the consumer to understand.

2. The wrong fish still slip through

Certification is certainly a logical step – no issue there. But, certification often relies on attestations and audits. That leaves gaps, which data, systems and enforcement aren’t currently equipped to address. That’s not the same thing as a fully transparent supply chain from sea to plate, which is the real aspiration. Our industry is in need of an audit trail which spans all stages of production and processing, for each final product produced.

There’s no silver bullet – moving the needle on traceability requires problem-solving, development and evangelism across a wide range of stakeholders. We’re all going to need to pitch in, and to study paradigms which have been successfully adopted in other verticals.

How do you feel about your firm’s role in achieving sea-to-plate traceability?