SILICON VALLEY, Calif., Oct. 31, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — Sunnyvale-based blockchain startup Crowdz — The B-Commerce Company™ — has partnered with Pure Michigan Business Connect (PMBC), an initiative of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and one of the country’s leading business-promotion organizations, to launch an aggressive effort to enable Michigan small and midsize businesses’ digital selling capabilities with the help of Crowdz’s revolutionary B-Commerce platform.

Crowdz’s blockchain-based digitization initiative commenced on Sept. 28 with a first-in-the-nation webinar, delivered exclusively for Michigan’s small and midsize businesses, entitled “Accelerating Your Sales With Crowdz: The B-Commerce Revolution.” (The archived webinar can be viewed by visiting https://youtu.be/ypoINDqj_J0). This event was followed by Crowdz’s formal introduction to Michigan’s businesses at the 2017 Small Business Association of Michigan (SBAM) Matchmaking Summit, held in Detroit on Oct. 11. Crowdz’s digitization efforts will continue on an individual-company basis throughout the next 15 months.

Crowdz has established a goal of digitizing at least 500 Michigan-based small and midsize businesses by the end of the fourth quarter of 2018.

Millions of Lost Sales Opportunities

Crowdz’s blockchain-based B2B ecommerce platform is designed especially for small and midsize businesses seeking to cost-efficiently increase their sales and boost their revenue — particularly B2B-focused companies who either have limited reach online or else haven’t yet entered the digital age.

“Throughout the world, blockchain-based commerce, or ‘B-Commerce,’ is still in its infancy,” explained Crowdz CEO Payson Johnston in announcing the initiative. “Today, almost 90 percent of all B2B commerce in the United States still takes place in highly manual fashion, such as via paper catalogs, telephone orders, fax, email, EDI, and sales representatives.” In the United States alone, “fully half of all small businesses don’t even have a website—an amazing statistic.”

The cost of these antiquated ways of doing business are enormous, says Johnston. He points to studies showing that companies worldwide are suffering a combined $4 trillion in unnecessary costs and lost sales each year. “Proportionately, the costs for small and medium-size businesses are even greater,” he notes, “since they are often essentially invisible in millions of potentially rewarding selling opportunities because business buyers either don’t know they exist or don’t know the products or services they offer.”

PMBC Data & Strategy Manager Colin Dillion agrees with this need. “We know that a great many Michigan businesses face growth and sales challenges — now more than ever before. That’s why we’re pleased to be working with Crowdz on this important initiative,” he says. “The Crowdz B-Commerce platform makes it easier than ever before for business buyers to find the products they’re looking for, and for business sellers to find the customers they need, all throughout the supply chain. This platform aligns with Pure Michigan Business Connect’s mission of bringing buyers and suppliers together through market-based solutions. We commend Crowdz for bringing this solution to growing companies.”

A Pathbreaking Sales Solution

Not surprisingly, Johnston concurs. “With Crowdz,” he explains, “manufacturers, brands, and other suppliers can quickly identify and engage the right customers with the right products at exactly the right time. This accelerates buyer sourcing, opens up lucrative new market opportunities, and can dramatically increase sales.”

Johnston offers this explanation of how the Crowdz B-Commerce platform works:

• First, Crowdz builds compelling, category-specific B2B marketplaces that are designed to create a vastly improved purchasing experience for B2B buyers, bringing large numbers of new potential customers to companies’ doors. 

• Second, Crowdz digitizes, categorizes, and intelligently tags entire product catalogs — along with each product’s specific attributes — so that a company’s products show up whenever a prospective buyer searches for a type of product they sell. 

• Third, Crowdz uses cutting-edge artificial-intelligence techniques to precisely match sellers to buyers, maximizing the chances of completing a sale. 

• Finally, Crowdz automatically propagates each company’s products to all of the top online B2B marketplaces and search systems in order to exponentially expand companies’ sales reach.

For all of these reasons, Johnston says, “We believe that the Crowdz B-Commerce platform is the ideal solution for suppliers wanting to rapidly and cost-effectively increase their customer base, boost their sales, and generate greater revenue.”

About Crowdz

Sunnyvale, California-based Crowdz, is building the world’s first blockchain-based B2B ecommerce transaction networks. Applying cutting-edge artificial-intelligence principles as well as emerging digital technologies like smart contracts and attribute-based search to antiquated B2B commerce systems, the Crowdz platform allow manufacturers, brands, and other suppliers to quickly identify and engage the right customers with the right products at exactly the right time — accelerating buyer sourcing and purchasing, opening lucrative new market opportunities, and multiplying sales volume.

Founded in 2014, Crowdz is headed by Payson E. Johnston, former B2B supply-chain senior manager for Cisco, and its executive team boasts more than 80 years of combined experience in B2B sourcing, supply chain, blockchain, e-retail, and ecommerce. Crowdz’s technologies are currently covered by seven pending patents, and a beta version of Crowdz’s sourcing system is currently being used by 240 seller companies offering 1.3 million products.

For more details, please visit: http://www.crowdz.io.

About PMBC

The Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) launched its multi-billion dollar Pure Michigan Business Connect (PMBC) public/private initiative in 2011 with the aim of connecting Michigan businesses with each other. Through PMBC’s business-to-business (B2B) network, Michigan companies are encouraged to increase their procurement spending within the state.

In addition, PMBC connects Michigan businesses to essential professional services. These services include pro bono service offerings from other Michigan businesses, services available from MEDC strategic partners, and internal service programs administered by the MEDC. Any business, regardless of size or industry, is encouraged to request these services designed to help companies grow.

For more information on PMBC’s programs and, in particular, its work with Crowdz, please contact Colin Dillon, Data & Strategy Manager for PMBC, at dillonc1@michigan.org.

For more details, please visit: http://www.michiganbusiness.org.

Media Contact:
Payson Johnston
Phone: 408-910-1975 
Email: paysonj@crowdz.io

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Crowdz in Michigan

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Related Links

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SOURCE Crowdz