There is something euphoric about embarking on a big new project. Its like peering into a lucky dip box at the local Easter Show. You never know what little goodies are lurking in that box and there's a feeling of excitement and opportunity. We're at that exciting stage where we've got an opportunity to address long standing issues embedded in the wedding industry. One of the first insights we gathered at the start of this project was that productivity would be improved if all wedding suppliers could be found in one online location. With that in mind our first challenge was set to find all of the businesses that service weddings in Australia.
Our research indicates that the Australian wedding industry is serviced by 10,625 actively engaged businesses at any one time. For the purpose of our research, 'actively engaged' means any supplier who has an up-to-date website, an up-to-date blog or a current presence on social media that includes regular reference to working with weddings. We generally did not include businesses where we could not establish if a recent wedding had been serviced. Some businesses that did not conform to these requirements were included if they appeared to be in start-up mode.
Customers searching online, (if they were so inclined) could actually find closer to 20,000 Australian wedding suppliers. About half of which are defunct businesses that still have an active web domain but an abandoned Facebook page. The Australian Bridal Industry Academy (ABIA) states on their website: "…out of the 35,508 wedding suppliers rated by ABIA brides, 21,628 have either gone broke, ceased servicing weddings or disappeared…"
As we continue to fine comb the internet, searching for wedding suppliers page by page, it really is apparent why the industry has never achieved having all of its businesses in one handy location. (Or even just half of them) The only way to provide access to the 10,625 active wedding suppliers in Australia, is to literally search the internet by hand. It's not the most exciting job to be honest, but having the entire industry in one online spot offers a huge opportunity to increase productivity in the industry. We're pretty excited about that!
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