Good for Business

Emilijus Vinca. Photo by V. Skaraitis.

According to Emilijus Vinča, the startup’s CEO and one of its founders, targeted expansion is helping DealLink.biz more quickly and effectively draw the attention of companies in each specific country to the Baltic region and the goods and services its businesses offer.

Nearly 1,000 public open tenders were announced on DealLink.biz in 2016. Lithuanians are still the most active tender participants, according to the CEO. But in a very short time Polish companies have surged to second place as the most frequent participating suppliers.

“Objective factors allow Polish companies to offer a better price, bigger capacity and perhaps even better overall terms. So they often have an easier time convincing the purchasing organisation. Lithuanian providers of goods and services aren’t very happy about that, of course. It’s forcing them not just to try harder, but also to review their pricing in order to stay competitive,” Vinča said, immediately adding that those seeking suppliers only benefit from such heightened competition.

Companies working in the construction business in Lithuania have already successfully acquired metal fabrications from Poland via DealLink.biz, replacing previous partners from Latvia who were charging more, he said.

“The appearance on DealLink.biz of companies from Finland and especially Poland has sharply increased competition among suppliers. We currently have more than 700,000 suppliers who can potentially respond to any tenders that are announced,” Vinča noted.

Competition among companies using the DealLink.biz platform is greatest in the construction and advertising sectors. In terms of size, the agreements and transactions that companies enter into through the system often involve hundreds of thousands of euros.

“Lidl, for example, selected six service providers with our assistance. The value of the agreements they reached is probably more than 1 mln euros,” the CEO said.

Vinča said the total value of B2B purchases concluded via DealLink.biz in 2017 is projected to reach 20 mln euros. He also said the startup is eyeing the German and U.K. markets, which it intends to enter with its open tender platform in the relatively near future. In fact, he stressed, the system is already now accessible worldwide – any company can freely announce tenders on the English-language version and obtain bids from a pool of suppliers which is rapidly growing.