A wedding brief, created by the couple, is a text based description of what they want to see for different aspects of their wedding. Initially we will breakdown the brief into the first wave of vendor types: (DJ's, Cakes, Flowers, Photos, Invites). The brief can include links to Pinterest boards, Spotify Play lists and Google Drive documents. Ideally, the brief becomes the digital representation of the couple’s wedding that they draw all inspiration from.
Couples can invite vendors to bid on their brief by viewing a list of the vendors and sending them messages. We will also solicit external vendors for the couple’s brief.
Vendors will respond with their proposals. The proposals will come in as text/hyperlinks to describe their services. It's up to them to sell themselves to the couples.
The couple will tell WedWell how much they want to pay for each vendor type. We may give suggestions for pricing based on analytics available to us. The couple will put a credit card down for each of the vendor they would like to book. After the week long bidding period the client will then have the choice to either confirm or cancel the awarded prize (50% of the payment).
We will normalize all the agreements. The vendors will receive 50% of the prize as the contest ends. We will then award the other 50% after the wedding. We will build in a rating system for each vendor to ensure the best vendors are rewarded with more contest wins.
I worked on Rentabilities (https://angel.co/rentabilities) which we ultimately shut down after 3 years. We focused on product rentals, which is just a sliver of the things you need for a wedding. We ran into lots of issues being a marketplace. We were able to scale the demand side nicely with 150k long tail visitors each month (things like "backyard wedding tent rental" or "scooby doo bouncy castle") and hundreds of quote requests each day. I'd say 15-20% of requests mentioned weddings. We were able to get merchants to sign up, but only by calling them on the phone (email just didn't work). The merchants were pretty bad at responding to emails. We tried a bidding system where we exposed the vendor names but the overall response was negative. We iterated to a product that looked alot like Operator or Magic, with merchants and consumers texting with a small group of customer service people (starting with our internal team) in the middle. One thing you're up against with rentals or event services is a timeline: In general a wedding or birthday party is an emotional event and people want to get everything booked fast. This means that often times we'd spend hours researching an event for someone, only to have them not book because it wasn't fast enough. Booking rates were higher for requests we could fill multiple quotes on faster, but it was really hard to fill them fast because the merchants were slow. At one point we did some research into weddings and found that wedding coordinators like to work with trusted vendors, usually over the phone or in person, directly. They really care about making sure the wedding goes exactly as planned. We relentlessly pursued the product and I'd say one of our biggest struggles was the resistance from merchants to adopt technology. We were able to scale to about $50k/mo in revenue before we ran out of cash/energy.
I still think there's something here and you may be able to make it work, maybe as wedding planning software.
Hope this is helpful in some way. This was just my experience at the time I worked on it. Feel free to hit me up anytime. aacook@aacook.co.
Good luck!
Like you, we're finding that largely vendors need to be reached out manually through phone calls. Our first phase is to focus in on vendor silos that can be largely iterated via chat/email/photos.
We'd love to hear about what specifically failed when you introduced the bidding services. We're seeing that the pain we feel with on boarding vendors is the exact pain that couples go through over and over trying to iterate with vendors today. We're hoping that vendors that accept technology will be rewarded with more business.
In terms of booking fast, we're considering running this auction with some sort of time limit, but that will likely only happen when we feel like there are enough vendors looking at the auctions.
Re: Trusted Vendors - One surprising number we found was how few people actually use wedding planners (sub 20%). That means 80% of the time couples are going out there and having to make their own judgement on which vendors to trust for this one-time gig. It's pretty nerve wrecking for them. Similar to something like Airbnb hosts, we think that vendors need to reviewed, socially validated, and rated on response times.
I'll definitely keep in touch as we get past this version 1.0. I'll drop you a line as we go.
Thanks for your direction here!
I might tear of small stories, though. In particular some of the things that did go well. Doing a whole write up is probably too much to bite off though.
This one's tough because weddings are close to the hearts, wallets, and our natural discretion on nepotism.
Finding new couples each and every day is the most expensive thing about this business.
ThumbTack attempts to do something like this. As a super ghetto immature growth tactic to let wedding DJ's know about the app I was marketing, I "requested bids" in 47 states for a wedding that was priced high for the app's founders. The requirement for the DJ's was they had to download the app and go through a quiz on how it works.
Lots of reasons why this is a tough space, but primarily anyone bidding on weddings probably is of low quality. Tough decision/motivation matrix here. I'd graph it out on a whiteboard and talk to all players.
DJs, caterers, etc... good thing is they're all reachable to have conversations with and many are struggling to find consistent gigs.
Client acquisition in the couple space is also not easy. Once you acquire the customer, the value has to come with that one wedding. We've considering creating this as a vendor solution that reduces friction between the vendor and clients. Then we can acquire vendors, and work on vendor retention. We're still really early here, so we're doing a bunch of trial an error as we launch.
Thanks again
Maybe you focus on connecting the couple and wedding planners? This way the planners can be the central point and you don't have so many moving parts?
I also like the idea of crowd sourcing recommendations from your friends and being able to assign tasks and really plan out the wedding. Imagine there was the whole thing from when you need to have a venue together and the app guides you through the whole process.
Good luck with everything!
Agree, this is definitely not a homejoy type of business. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on how you think we should take fees on both sides? Initially our thought was to model it like an Airbnb rental where as the couple are the guests, and the vendors are the hosts. Build in the proper technology to make the system work better and you can easily take a service fee, which we will take from the couple looking for services.
Yea! We envision that the couple has a go to service to handle everything down to the last payment. We envision the bride/groom signing off at the end and paying all the vendors by pressing a button. Currently they literally write checks at the end of the event.
Thanks for the help!
I would add that it's quite an interesting problem in its self to decide what tasks are even in a wedding and what needs to be done. Maybe my idea is a little different in that it's focused around having control over all aspect of your wedding from the companies through to who will usher people into the church and what hymns will be sung...
This then makes me start thinking are there differences in the planning of a gay wedding, a baptist wedding, and Indian wedding...
Imagine if you could assign tasks and roles like groomsman/brides maid and you can agree to help out...
There's millions of possibilities with it... Even things like seat planning. Could be a lifetime of work.
Charging for the budgeting feature and allowing people who had already overspent by the most access to special offers by tradesman. You would have to be careful to filter out offers that were already being used!
Thanks for the input!
The Brief is a great idea, but it needs to pass some QC before being bid on. At the time of your vendor selection for a standard wedding, you don't know what you don't know. Its tough to choose well when you are not sure what to optimize for. I suggest a LONG list of questions to answer to get the details on how the wedding should proceed.
2nd. Venue selection has a lot to do with which vendors you can use, since not all will travel to all locations, and not all venues have all the amenities that some vendors need (big driveway for shuttle bus, commercial kitchen for caterer).
My experience with vendors is that they all communicate in different styles, and mostly poorly. Compared to office work, their typical responsiveness by email/voice/text is irregular (and unnerving). Maintaining responsiveness standards would be the single biggest benefit I can imagine for making the process better.
Many of the best vendors from your wedding may not be wedding vendors - Uber/Chariot both put together better cost comparisons for transport to/from my rehearsal dinner for guests than did most of the dedicated transit companies that specialize in weddings.
We're experimenting with on-boarding. We're doing "Wedding Consultations"- phone calls and walk through a clients ideas for each vendor. And also a wedding brief, which is that long list of questions. We're experimenting with something a bit more visual vs words. Love for your to give our current version a try and give us feedback!
Locations: While we haven't really said it on the site, we're highly focused on NYC weddings (where weddings are 2x the cost of average weddings). The interesting thing here is that most vendors are willing to travel within the 5 boroughs.
Vendor responsiveness is a huge issue from what we've heard. One of our metrics on the vendors will be responsiveness. Similar to Airbnb hosts.
Best vendors not being pure wedding vendors. It's a point well taken. We're currently focused on the silos covered by small, disparate vendors, and providing solutions for those vendors. A client may not book all vendor types through us, but we will be the grease between the friction that exists with the old school vendors.
Thanks again for your thoughts, love for you to give it a try. Even if it's just to provide more feedback!
Furthermore, what incentive does a couple about to get married have for joining the platform? It sounds like they are somewhat locked into the vendors that come to them. I think you mention that they can cancel but then there is then no incentive for the couple to take it seriously. It turns into quote shopping instead of an actual marketplace.
I like the idea because this space is ripe for change. There is a lot of money flowing around and people who get married are confused about where is the best/most affordable/most reputable place to put it. I think if you can align the incentives on both side properly, this could be a real winner.
On the vendor side, one thought is that we may need to consider being less of a market place and more of a tool that allows couples to quickly iterate and pay for services with any vendor. So the discovery of the vendors could happen outside of our service, and we help with the pain points of initial iteration and payments. Eventually we could open up the market place as an addition to our services.
We're super early, so your thoughts and others are helping us shape our development. Thanks again.
I'm confused by your use of the words "contest" and "prize". You've got a straightforward auction, why are you not calling it that?
What's the incentive for vendors to come to you, won't this force them to compete on price in a market where price often doesn't matter?
Do you know vendors will agree to take 50% after the wedding? How are these agreements structured today? How will you ensure vendors don't get ripped off?
How are you going to get customers and vendors to use your site?
Edit:
How will you make money?
What if you just act as a marketplace for vendors, handle the payments in full up front, and take a percentage?
Wording: Contest/Prize vs Auction, we're evolving our copy as we go. The initial idea was that through the iteration process, the best (not necessarily the cheapest) vendor would win. So in our eyes, less like an auction. But point taken.
Vendor incentives: Vendors will be able to proactively approach events that fit their style/schedule. They can worry less and less about their own ads, and let their service tell the story (with a good review system- this will be possible). Also, we think that standardized agreements/money escrow, we can take some of the friction out of both sides.
50% before/after the wedding: We're working with just a small subset of wedding vendor silos at this point, and focused on vendors that can fit in with this 50/50 template. It may not work for every silo in the future. Vendors will be guaranteed 50%, we hold the other 50%. If something doesn't go off well at the wedding, we will look into an arbitration clause (still working out the details here), but our hope is to make sure both sides are happy.
Customer acquisition: This is the hardest (isn't it always?). Right now we're hyper focused on the NYC Wedding market (2x the average wedding costs). It's all super grass roots right now; face to face meetings, wedding events, also we're incentivizing new clients with $100 back and $100 for anyone they share the service with. We're also running a few targeted fb/google ads to see if they are helpful. If you have any other ideas, we're all ears!
How will you make money? What if you just act as a marketplace for vendors, handle the payments in full up front, and take a percentage? <- This is in large part our idea on how to make money.
Feedback:
1. I'm the groom. The truth is, weddings are really for brides. Yes, we're both getting married, but it's all about the bride. My fiancée is a typical SF professional. I can tell you right now she would be skeptical about a "bidding" process. Believe it or not, the wedding planning process for her is fun. It's a lot of work, but "curating" her own wedding is enjoyable. Although I can totally understand why from a groom's perspective we just want to 99designs the problem away. :)
2. I'm not sure how you will convince the better vendors to join your program. It sounds like this is a great platform for up and coming wedding vendors, but once they get good - they won't need your service anymore. They'll have clout on Yelp or theknot or weddingwire. And people that are looking for good vendors will go seek them out.
3. Putting down a credit card is a scary thing - most of the contract stuff comes way later. Many of our vendors went through honeybook.com. What's to stop them from just going outside of your system and giving the bride and groom a better deal? How do you ensure you will have lock-in?
4. Maybe you'll charge money for the bidding process? Or try to place ads?
This is a great space to disrupt...I hope a product like this becomes popular at some point because weddings can be really tough to plan.
Some thoughts on your comments: 1. I don't necessarily think that our solution is for everyone. We're looking to find our little niche in the market where a couple is ok with forgo-ing some of the work involved with the planning process in the hope to save time and potentially money. It's not for everyone, the same way airbnb wasn't for everyone when it first came out. If we can unlock a small market, we think we can grow it. Time will tell!
2. Very similar issue here with vendors as well. We're looking at a niche vendor group at first. Ideally it's top notch vendors who need help getting the word out. Also will help if they are tech savvy and willing to respond quickly electronically.
3. We really like honeybook.com, we may consider using them until payments are fully built out. In terms of lock in, we're looking to get the clients to really work on the iteration back and forth with the vendors (in many silos) at the same time. The goal will be that they see the technology/payment/insurance/etc all integral to the process. It's ideally similar to the feeling you feel when you book an apartment with airbnb, sure.. you could just message the host through airbnb and try to pay them directly, but with the services they offer, it wouldn't make sense. We're still at an early stage, so yea.. it's a danger in the beginning.
4. We're brainstorming the many different monetization points possible. We may just lower the barriers as much as possible initially to find customers, then look to monetize more heavily when we have actual data.
Thanks for the thoughts here. Would love for you to check out wedwell.co and give the wedding brief a try (even just as a test). It's evolving over the next few days with feedback we've received here, but please do give it a try!
That said, one thing you may to to think about is people don’t just want to find the cheapest vendor. Of course they want to save money but at the same time, they want it done right. You only do this once. When we got married we wanted to find vendors we could trust that also were affordable. To do that my wife mostly spoke to her friends and asked them who they used for various tasks.
I personally think you will be better building this platform first as a way for friends to share vendor details & reviews. If executed right this builds the demand side of your platform and vendor data. Since sharing would be a core part of the experience once the ball is rolling you should be able to increase the number of active users quickly. When you have a ton of users on the platform swapping vendor info it’s going to be much easier for you to convince vendors to hop on board.
The way we look at WedWell is not to find you the cheapest vendor, but to provide the vendor that will allow for the best experience. The better experience comes with our technology and validated vendors. Our technology allows for quicker/easier iteration on the initial idea and for quick/easy payments for vendors.
I really like your idea of starting with a socially validated review system early. We're considering building that out, and may do so.
Thanks again, we'll let you know how we progress here.
The benefits are twofold: customers can get a flavour of what your platform can offer (say, for my case, I would think "oh hey that Star Wars wedding theme is listed here! My idea of such a wedding wasn't so crazy after all); vendors that specialise in certain niche themes can have a chance to be featured in your platform, which hopefully leads to more sales.
Well, best of luck to you! It's unusual to see couples building tech companies together :)
Thanks, actually the team isn't a couple working together. Just a bunch of friends.
Recently, I've tried some similar services that connect businesses (in this case home remodeling/contracting) to consumers and I've found that many of the service providers use it as an advertising platform and avoid actually fulfilling service through the site. Would you position yourself as a lead generation site or a total platform for the entire process?
Our goal would be to eventually be an entire platform for a couple to book, iterate details, and pay for vendors.
There are plenty of vendor sites out there, so not too concerned that someone would search for vendors through our site and bypass our service, but it's definitely something we will keep an eye out for.
How do you know people will want to use such a service, have you tried manually running the process to see how it works in practice ?
What do you expect your user economics to be (how are you planning to acquire users, how much revenue will you make per user, etc.) ?
How do we know people want such a service? I'm at that age where everyone is getting married. (My two sisters, my best friends,etc). I started asking more and more questions as I got closer to my own wedding- I found that the process was super time consuming (meeting many vendors, then finding out they aren't available for those dates, or they are way outside of your budget), and expensive. The reason I know people want such a service, is because I want it.. So I need to build this thing before I get married (not anytime soon-thankfully).
Have we tried to run this manually? Yes. I hate to say we're in version 1.0.. we're honestly pre-mvp. We built this as quickly as possible and literally every step is manual currently. We'll look to automate bottle necks as we find them.
Customer acquisition is literally the hardest thing right now. It's a lot of us manually looking for couples who are engaged and offering them our services right now. Also we're running a few FB/Google ads. We're open to ideas here. We're hyper focused on the NYC wedding market, because it's the most expensive (2x an average wedding), and we live here. There are tons of vendors literally outside of our doors.
So we don't have exact numbers for cost of customer acquisition, we do know how to monetize them once in. We know the average cost of the goods our vendor types (We're focused on 5 types right now; Cakes/flowers/photos/invites/music), and we are aiming for our service fee to be about 10% of the rendered fee.
Thanks for the questions. Love to hear if you have any ideas on how to best get this started (and acquire more customers!)
We have considered creating a vendor focused service, but there are a couple of services in this space (Honeybook.com).
Love to hear any thoughts you or the rest of the HN audience has to say about this.
Our hope is to eventually graduate into handling venues as well, which will allow us to bundle those services.
Thanks again for the input!
