Multi-vendor B2B marketplace connecting US manufacturers with industrial buyers — featuring RFQ automation, quote comparison, contract management, and PO workflows — processing $28M procurement volume with 850+ verified manufacturers.
IndustrialLink identified that US industrial buyers were sourcing from manufacturers through a 6-week cycle of phone calls, email RFQs, fax quote responses, and manual contract negotiations. The process was slow, opaque, and heavily relationship-dependent — meaning buyers defaulted to existing suppliers rather than finding better-value alternatives, and small manufacturers couldn't compete against incumbents with established relationships.
We built TradeLynk in 22 weeks: a verified manufacturer marketplace with structured RFQ tools, automated quote comparison, ISO/UL certification verification, DocuSign contract execution, Stripe Connect marketplace payments, and Elasticsearch technical specification search — processing $28M in procurement volume by Month 22.
Industrial procurement RFQs were distributed via email to a list of known suppliers. Responses arrived at different times, in different formats, requiring manual normalisation for comparison. Chasing non-responsive suppliers consumed days of procurement team time per RFQ.
Verifying a new manufacturer's quality certifications, production capacity, financial stability, and compliance status required manual document collection and review taking 2–4 weeks. Most procurement teams defaulted to incumbents to avoid this friction.
A marketplace facilitating transactions between buyers and manufacturers across 50 US states needed to handle sales tax nexus rules, exemption certificates, and tax calculation correctly for every transaction — a compliance requirement that has derailed many marketplace businesses.
TradeLynk needed to collect payment from buyers, take a platform commission, and pay out to manufacturers on a defined settlement schedule — requiring Stripe Connect marketplace architecture with per-manufacturer sub-accounts, not a simple payment gateway.
Industrial products are specified by technical attributes — material grade, tensile strength, temperature rating, certification standards. Standard keyword search returns irrelevant results on these queries. Procurement teams couldn't find what they needed by product name alone.
Purchase contracts between industrial buyers and manufacturers required legally binding e-signatures, version control, and audit trails — particularly for high-value, multi-delivery contracts. Email-attached PDFs with DocuSign links were the previous approach, with no template library.
Category-specific RFQ templates with required technical specification fields. Buyers complete a structured RFQ form, and the system auto-distributes to all matched, verified manufacturers by capability, certification, and geography — no manual distribution list required.
Manufacturer onboarding: self-service document upload → automated ISO/UL/ULC certification verification via database lookup → manual review by TradeLynk team for capacity and compliance assessment. Approved manufacturers display verified badges by certification type.
Avalara AvaTax integration for real-time, nexus-aware US sales tax calculation on every transaction. Exemption certificate management allows tax-exempt buyers to upload certificates once and have them applied automatically on qualifying transactions.
Stripe Connect with platform fee model — TradeLynk charges a 3.5% marketplace fee, automatically deducted at the time of payment capture. Manufacturer sub-accounts receive payouts at 30-day settlement cycle via ACH. Full 1099-K compliance reporting generated automatically.
Elasticsearch index with structured facets for material, certification, lead time, MOQ, geographic proximity, and quality rating. Buyers can filter by specific technical attributes and get relevant manufacturer results in under 500ms — regardless of how they phrase the query.
Embedded DocuSign workflow with a library of standard contract templates (supply agreements, NDAs, framework agreements) that buyers and manufacturers customise and execute within the platform. All contracts stored with version history and audit trail.
200 verified manufacturers onboarded. First $1.2M in RFQs distributed through the platform. Average sourcing cycle 3.1 weeks vs 6-week manual baseline. First enterprise procurement team signed a 12-month framework agreement after comparing 8 quotes in under a week.
850+ verified manufacturers on platform. $14M quarterly procurement volume. Average sourcing cycle improved to 2.6 weeks. Stripe Connect processed 400+ marketplace transactions with zero payment disputes. DocuSign contracts executed on 78% of orders over $50K.
$28M cumulative procurement volume. IndustrialLink raised $12M Series A citing marketplace traction and manufacturer network depth. Platform expanded to Canadian and Mexican manufacturers. TradeLynk cited in 3 industry publications as the leading digital manufacturing procurement marketplace.
"TradeLynk solved a real problem in industrial procurement — the 6-week RFQ circus. We built the marketplace on Digivance's platform and hit $28M in procurement volume within 22 months. The manufacturer vetting process is robust, the RFQ automation is seamless, and the contract workflow is legally solid. We raised $12M on the back of this platform."
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