Tony skinner 00:02
Hi, and welcome to the podcast channel for podcastsmybusiness.com.au and contentmadeeasy.com.au and today we have Joseph Bruzzaniti joining us is that italian?
joseph 00:15
Yeah, that’s Italian. Yes, exactly. And well pronounced,
Tony skinner 00:24
The Italian I know is what i learned at school that you cannot learn at school and you’re from https://www.sawce.com.au/ You’ve got a pretty unique product out there as hard to find unique products out there and have it tell us a little bit about? 
joseph 00:42
Sure. Yeah, so https://www.sawce.com.au/ is an essential online marketplace for furnishing and Fitouts. And there’s really two, it’s a double sided marketplace. And what we mean by that is that there are on the one side, lots of retailers right now, there’s over a couple 100 retailers and there’s over 100,000 products. And on the other side, there are the buyers, which are the ones that would come to the site to use it to furnish and fit out their spaces. So the idea behind https://www.sawce.com.au/ is to be the central dedicated online marketplace for furniture and fitouts.
Tony skinner 01:22
Excellent and soWhen we look at furnishing and fit outs, we’re looking at things such as the artwork and carpet or rugs and chairs and lounges and the like, correct? Yep.
joseph 01:39
Anything you need to furnish in fit out a space and that covers home spaces, your home or an apartment. And it covers commercial spaces, whether it’s an office or a restaurant, could be anything a church, a police station, it’s all spaces.
Tony skinner 01:56
Right? So are there different requirements on what sort of seating and rugs you need in a commercial space compared to say, a home space that you guys can customize them?
joseph 02:07
Yeah, so. So we’re not the retailer, we’re, we’re a search engine, and a buy engine. So the users, the buyers come to the site, and they’re able to enter their requirements that are you’re able to use the menu structure or use a search engine key in their requirements. And they can be very granular with their requirements.
joseph 02:27
So if they said commercial chairs, then you’re going to get commercial chairs. If they want particular fabrics or materials, then they will get that those returned in the search results. So we’ve approached the problem more from an engineering perspective, in the way that we’ve aggregated all of the retailers and their products. And we’ve, we’ve used very granular data to be able to index that into one really large search engine.
joseph 02:52
So it will be highly differentiated depending on the user’s requirements. And as I said earlier, it covers office commercial or home requirements. And they are different.
Tony skinner 03:04
Yeah, well, okay, so they certainly are different. So I was here at home, and I needed a rug. And I was looking up a rug for home. I find you amongst there. And one of the good thing, hopefully. And one of the good things we were talking about before is that you got to focus on a lot of those smaller wholesalers and smaller retailers rather than the huge mega ones.
joseph 03:26
Yeah, correct. Yeah. So in Australia, there’s over 40,000 retailers, the industry itself is very, very large. So it’s about $50 billion, just to be over $50 billion of sales a year. And, and a large chunk of that is actually smaller retailers.
joseph 03:44
So they have great products, and they have great service, but they but they don’t have visibility, so you, you often may not see them. And so our job is to be able to integrate all the retailers and particularly give exposure to the smaller retailers so that when you’re looking for a rug, then you’ll be able to find, you know, a few 1000 Rugs be able to narrow it down and be able to do a very precise search to find exactly what you’re looking for.
joseph 04:12
So provides maximum diversity and, and the ability to be able to, I guess develop a space that uniquely fits your requirements, rather than just go up the street and say, look, here’s what we’ve got, here’s what you’re going to get, you know.
Tony skinner 04:28
Yeah, and I think there’s a difference in that is that you do focus on those smaller guys. So what about manufacturers? Is there a lot of manufacturing that occurs in Australia where they can customize things a little bit more?
joseph 04:41
Yeah, it’s, it’s a great question. So what done? So the short answer is yes. Where it’s evolved to is some of the more usual let’s call it commodity based manufacturing, has moved offshore. It just wasn’t competitive to continue in Australia. So it’s the likes Asia, China, particularly are mass producing products that are of that commodity sort of generic nature. However, where the Australian manufacturers and customizations come in, and it’s particularly obvious in the furnishing fit out spaces that you need to do a lot of things that aren’t just generic commodity based products.
joseph 05:21
So you, you may have a specific table that you needed a certain length or in a certain material. Same with sofas or, or in built cabinets. So there’s all of these requirements that don’t lend themselves to just commodity purchases. And that’s where the Australian manufacturers are excelling, rather than just the generic commodity based products. So that so and we find that very exciting, being able to support that.
Tony skinner 05:48
Well, it’s interesting, because I got a couple of custom made armchairs here, that were made in Australia. And short, you know, let’s be honest, they’re not the mass produced $200 chairs that we all know fall to pieces and fall apart very quickly, I’ve got some furniture like that. And it’s worth paying a little bit more. And I like the idea that you can just research because I haven’t, I’ve found it very difficult to find someone who’s able and willing to make those chairs.
joseph 06:17
Yeah, that’s right. And that’s, that’s kind of what’s informed the business. So we actually ran a pilot site, and fairly intensely for a couple of years, fine tuning the business so that we could get it right before we launched the source. And, and, and we, we built relationships with those manufacturers and customization people in there. And they’re raring to go, what they need is more volume of business.
joseph 06:41
And so they’re looking forward to us, helping them generate more customers, and and then they can do all the good things they do. But that’s the one really great thing about seeing the manufacturing and made in Australia evolve. In Australia. It’s not, it’s not going to be a high volume, mass produced things. It’s going to be more specialized, customized, bespoke more interesting products that can complement some of the more high volume products.
Tony skinner 07:11
Okay. So https://www.sawce.com.au/ isn’t quite ready as a site just yet. And I noticed that you’re calling for investors, which is great. So when do you think you’ll be launching the site Mainstream?
joseph 07:26
Yes. So the site, as I said, we ran, we ran a pilot, which we just closed down in anticipation of going live. So we’re very, very close. In short, within the next couple of weeks, we should we should be live. So we were setting up the we’ve been running a test environment to obviously make sure that everything’s ready to go, rolling up the training modules to the retailers. All the data has been migrated.
joseph 07:49
So very, very close. The production servers just about ready. So within a couple of weeks, we expect to be live. 
Tony skinner 07:57
Hmm. Cool. And I noticed there’s something interesting on here. Customers who go into a survey can win a $500 voucher.
joseph 08:07
i Yes. So we, in fact, I think our PR agents will announce something about that next few days. But we we are running a survey. So it’s a source Insights report into the behavior of buyers around furnishing and fit out, which we think is providing lots of insights into how people are thinking what they’ve done recently, what they’re planning to do. And that’s and that’s important to share with the industry so that they can get those insights. And, and we’ve published
joseph 08:41
The preliminary results, which are with our PR agents, and, and we’re still inviting more people to participate. If they’d like to participate, they can go to source.com.au. And there’s a link from there to the survey and they can complete the survey. And there’ll be five prizes, randomly drawn with vouchers of $500 each.
Tony skinner 09:02
That’s fantastic. Okay, well, there we go use vouchers on the site anyway.
joseph 09:10
Yeah, that’s exactly right with us on https://www.sawce.com.au/ Excellent.
Tony skinner 09:14
Okay. So I just thought of something. So the furnishings and the light that are required, are they rented, bought or leased all of the above.
joseph 09:25
So predominantly, initially, we’re focusing on purchase. So that’s the the retailers they’re there to sell their products and the customers they’re there to buy the products. There’s obviously going to be a market that is looking to hire furnish furniture or furnishings. And and we’ll look at that as a subsequent step into the future but right now focuses on really those new products from retailers that you purchase directly.
Tony skinner 09:54
Hmm. But that’s really important and again, you know, the smaller retailers need to get on board This now, and okay, Christmas is coming up. So maybe again, we’ve got thanks to COVID, destroying everything else, bit of a delay what you guys are doing as well,
joseph 10:11
it certainly made it a bit harder over the past year to complete what we’ve been trying to complete. But you know, that’s, you know, that’s the challenge everybody is faced, there has been a lot of pressure on smaller retailers, particularly because a lot of the smaller retailers have relied heavily on their smaller store footprint, and that relied on foot traffic. And so when that when that went away, they really struggled even more.
joseph 10:34
On top of that, that’s a pretty heavy transition from traditional to online, and so that there’s kind of like a double whammy there for the smaller retailers to been able to, you know, adjust to this kind of post COVID world. And in any case, having this acceleration of online, purchase behavior by customers that they need to respond to. So we’re really there to help address and help them through both of those challenges.
Tony skinner 11:00
Yeah, I can see the benefit of that, because instead of focusing too much on their own side of things, they can do it via, you know, try and help them save money and what’s happening with them. That’s right, use you as their primary source.
joseph 11:13
That’s exactly right. So it’s, as I say, two of the big challenges they have is how do we how do they get exposure to more customers? And that’s, that can be hugely costly? And then secondly, you know, how do we help if I’m a small retailer, and I’ve got very little technical skills and online skills, how do I go on online and compete effectively. So it’s really two, it’s a two pronged challenge for them.
joseph 11:34
And we help them achieve both of those. So we, we don’t charge any upfront costs or fees to the retailers, they can get on board, set up their store and start selling pretty much immediately. And the store within source has both the technical capabilities to allow them to transact, but also the ability to manage their store so they can run promotions, you know, they can set up their delivery rules to be able to quote the delivery quotes they want.
joseph 12:01
So it’s really a whole holistic approach that can effectively replace their website. Plus, it has customers that’s already coming to it. No good having a website, if you’ve got no customers coming to it. And then you need to spend 1000s and 1000s of dollars to get in there.
Tony skinner 12:15
Yeah, it’s great, because it is helpful to make that big leap online and they need they need to make that leap online, whether they want to or not. Yeah, that’s a great way of doing
joseph 12:24
- That’s That’s exactly right. It’s, it’s come with a rush. And COVID is really accelerated things in for all of us. And you know that, but the good thing is that with source Comdata, you there is a pathway for those retailers and, and we’ve already got over 200 that are happy and wanting more. And so our job, once we go live is to just drive more traffic to the site and give more exposure to those retailers. Let them do what they do really well.
Tony skinner 12:55
Right. All right. Well, thanks so much for your time, guys. Anything else you’d like to add?
joseph 12:59
I think as you mentioned, we are running through a capital raise right now. So the details are that are on the site, but we’re going to be launching in a couple of weeks. And yeah, we are very excited about building a strong brand that will be hopefully top of mind when people are looking to finish and fill out their spaces. So yeah, and thank you for your time. Much appreciated.
Tony skinner 13:22
Joseph. Thank you.
13:23