Using AI to build the Amazon of industrial spare parts.

Trade Parts Finder enables companies in the building and maintenance trades to identify and purchase spare parts and appliances in seconds using AI.

According to Construction4U, there are more than one million firms in the UK’s building and maintenance trades. Companies are limited by time as information is fragmented when it comes to the availability and location of millions of products. Often, firms waste valuable hours and resources every day attempting to identify the right part and find it at the best location or price.

Based on their extensive conversations with over 1,000 users and customers, Trade Parts Finder claims that 95% of building firms cannot charge clients for identifying parts and materials, obtaining stock availability, billing and reconciliation, managing cash flows and arranging logistics. The part-identification process is outdated and relies on manual work such as comparing photos of spare parts with diagrams or reviewing appliance manuals. Stock availability is fragmented leading to customers paying more, waiting longer and driving further than necessary. Working with hundreds of firms in building and maintenance trades over the last two years, Trade Parts Finder estimates that over one million hours are spent on sourcing industrial and mechanical parts per day.

According to Travis Perkins’ research, the market for construction materials in the UK totalled over £78bn in 2023. Trade Parts Finder is aiming to address a £15bn opportunity in the UK’s building trades where stock fragmentation of industrial spare parts is impacting productivity daily. To this end, the company provides manufacturer part information and consolidates stock availability across suppliers and manufacturers. Building on this information, they intend to reduce the sourcing process to seconds. Trade Parts Finder intends to become the all-in-one sourcing platform for building and maintenance firms providing trade credit and integrations with accounting software.

What does Trade Parts Finder do?

The company consolidates fragmented information on industrial spare parts and appliances in the building and maintenance sectors, with the aim of unlocking productivity gains worth billions for customers and suppliers alike. The company has developed a platform that provides instant consolidated stock availability across suppliers, helping firms to find the correct part and best purchase option in seconds.

Trade Parts Finder is working on applying large language models, natural language processing and image recognition to add further convenience in finding the correct part. By addressing real pain points, such as spending hours to find the correct spare part, Trade Parts Finder is helping companies establish new habits to reduce purchasing processes to seconds. The company aims to provide instant universal stock availability of every industrial appliance and spare part globally. Trade Parts Finder will further embed its software into customers’ workflows by offering material financing and modular integrations.

Who is Trade Parts Finder helping?

Trade Parts Finder believe they have identified a great opportunity for sourcing industrial parts. Interact Analysis reported that global manufacturing production will reach $44.3tn in 2023. Meanwhile, the aftermarket parts in the construction industry was estimated to reach $1.1tn by 2028, growing at a CAGR of 8.4% from 2023 to 2028, according to Market Data Forecast.

Targeting 20% of the total market, Trade Parts Finder initially targets companies in UK’s gas and heating industry. It initially taps into the time-critical industrial parts market in this region, which was estimated at £15bn according to research done by Travis Perkins. The company targets B2B customers, including industrial construction companies and manufacturers.

According to the company, as customers gain free visibility on aggregated stock availability, there is less need to contact suppliers, which in turn can reduce their overheads. Trade Parts Finder suggests that their robust data on customer demand and local stock availability can help suppliers improve their inventory management and pricing.

How does Trade Parts Finder work?

The company offers a free platform providing information where users can input their location to find merchants and suppliers nearby where they can buy their desired materials. The company is developing a subscription-based all-in-one sourcing platform that instantly identifies millions of parts and provides stock availability across thousands of stores. The platform is designed to leverage the latest search technologies to allow users to submit voice notes, text messages and images through a chat-based interface to identify the part they are sourcing. The company intends to offer financing options to the customers and generate revenues through a marketplace fee.

The next steps… 

According to Trade Parts Finder’s founders, over the last two months the company has been growing organically by 50% MoM and had over 500 users in August. Over the next 12 months, the company’s main goal is to grow its user base to 1,000 daily users and 100 weekly customers. Trade Parts Finder was initially launched in the UK in 2022. It aims to expand into the rest of the EU in the coming years. Trade Parts Finder is now looking to raise equity though *FlowwMarkets easy-to-use private markets infrastructure.

*Floww Markets Limited is a company authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Firm reference number 980098.

The information and imagery contained within this article does not represent the opinions of Floww. Floww does not have a view on opinions provided by Trade Parts Finder in this article and elsewhere where they may be expressed, and is not responsible or liable for the information within this article.

This company has now closed their fundraise on Floww.