i've stepped outside of a packed installer show to grab some time with Victor Muhin who's is founder
and ceo of SNAP-IT and i think it's a product and a service you're really gonna like and started in
plumbing but we're coming to electrical so Victor tell us about SNAP-IT what was the idea originally
the idea behind it was to resolve a problem for myself my installers when we used to work
in plumbing heating doing first second fixes doing reactive repair work i was looking to make our
team more productive lose the time in traffic losing the time queuing up losing the time for
sourcing materials so i used to deliver materials to them myself or send the Uber cars to to deliver
materials to them and then we just looked for ways how to optimize it okay so let's just
unpack that so i've got the site i'm set up to do a job and like everybody does something on the
job's changed and you need to get an additional part you were using Uber to send those parts in
normally what would happen is uh as we try to work as a team so what i said to the guys if you've got
your hands full and you need something to make the most out of your day and make sure we're going to
complete the job on time for the satisfaction of the customer i asked them to call me maybe i could
deliver it myself if i'm around maybe i can send a courier with the material so what we did we we
basically tried to make sure that we optimized our time so the guy doesn't need to run away uh
failed to complete because he got stuck in traffic or she got up in traffic they'll give us a call
if the situation was right we'll just deploy Uber car with a piece of material if it was larger one
or we'll try to get maybe some moped guys to do it for us okay so that could be anything from a small
plumbing elbow it's not really the cost of the part isn't it the time you lose by sending someone
from site down to the wholesaler London traffic it just becomes but also you can also consider the
fact that so the journey of the installation it doesn't really start from the point of
you walking into a customer's house it's really from the point of you know you're getting the
job you're turning up you're driving around the block trying to find the parking spot you finally
found the parking spot you know estimated time of completion will be in around four to five hours
so you're not going to really be paying only one hour parking you maybe put three four hours into
it so once you're upstairs with all of your tools you unpack you start the work you realize you need
extra piece of something so now as an engineer in the past i would never leave my tools anywhere
myself so i'll pack it all up i'll go downstairs as you drive off somebody else takes that parking
spot so that's your 20 pounds in London gone so now it starts the journey of procurement finding
the part where to drive then you know the distance of going there you might get a bin lorry in front
of you and then once you get to the merchant there might be a queue that might take you another 10
15 minutes so before you know you lost an hour you get a free coffee down at the wholesaler
yes trades people in London charging around nine pounds an hour i'm sure they can afford coffee
in uh in Starbucks right downstairs yeah while the wait for SNAP-IT delivery so you started
in London because obviously this this problem is amplified in London where parking is a nightmare
traffic is a nightmare we started in Notting Hill um i used to work myself in Notting Hill around
Nottingham Kensington Chelsea area and i knew couple merchants were spoken to them we onboarded
them we're giving them an iPads we had a couple lads using them and some of my team used to use it
try to work out how it's going to work okay so this i mean obviously wholesalers a lot of them
are very traditional yeah they don't online a challenging world for some of them how's the
smaller independent wholesaler sort of taken to this new approach well it was easier to start
with the two merchants because because they knew me personally i used to shop them myself and while
i explained to them the iPad i'll give them where the orders will appear is basically extension of
me so see that iPad as me anything pops up on it just add it to my ticket end of the month i'll pay
and it just basically developed from there we're giving them an iPads once we got two on board
the third one wanted to come on board Embassy plumbing came on board and Embassy plumbing
is actually one of the most traditional merchants there is a counter there's like four or five guys
they all use calculators there's no tills the main reason why i think the owner brought into SNAP-IT
because they're on Edgeware road they are the nearest merchant to Mayfair and i said to him
like how many people come here from Mayfair to buy from you and he said never nobody else do you
know why getting from Marble Arch up the Edgeware road the traffic is packed and their bus is there
so nobody's gonna do it they'll rather go back to Essex reschedule it for tomorrow buy from the
local merch and come back in town tomorrow but if they buy it from SNAP-IT he's the nearest merchant
they're receiving hundreds of orders per day now they are servicing Mayfair via SNAP-IT that
they never managed to do in like in many decades yeah and obviously there's people who've stolen
your idea you've got Screwfix doing one hour deliveries now you've got Tool Station trying it
i wouldn't ever put it like stealing my idea before i executed SNAP-IT there are hundreds
of trades people who had that idea and i think i was just a lucky person to wear the stars online
that it actually came together and it is a very difficult task to do there there are lots of
hurdles in the process um also in our everyday lives we have a 10 minutes grocery deliveries
in in London food delivery services anything you buy you have Amazon prime we are so accustomed to
have things now anything more than 10 minutes in groceries now is too long like you know you want
to put a kettle on and have your milk before the kettle's boiled so i think it was bound to happen
and if you consider the other places where it's happening it's more of a luxury it's a luxury
to order milk from an app because it'll cost you probably a fiver it's a luxury to get a Deliveroo
because it's gonna be more expensive in trades it's not a luxury it's optimization of your time
you're saving money by using it yes it might be a little bit more expensive than going to
the merchant but if you think amount of time saved parking saved petrol saved potential
congestion charge saved your again time because most ex you can't really buy time well and all
really trades are selling is time that that is in the more productive hours you're on site
that's right the better business people they say that they bill for the hours when they are
out and uh my argument is that every time that when i was on tools i'll go out to get bits even
if i was like 40 minutes half an hour which is very quick uh people wouldn't want to pay for the
time you're not at the house yeah because there's a lack of transparency what you're doing you might
have had that bit in your van and had a sandwich downstairs and they don't want to pay you £100
for that time yeah you are being paid for highly uh qualified professional job it could be you
know electrician it could be a gas engineer it could be a plumber and you know at the end of the
job you've done an amazing job and you start actually arguing with a customer over £100 and
if customers gonna feel that they haven't been charged fairly they're not likely to use it
again yeah but if you're in the house and you're waiting for it for instance for SNAP-IT delivery
you can upsell you can right i i've just i've just you know i've just ordered what you need
yeah i'm here is there anything else i can do for you that's great they have to use the dead
time too yeah i like you know you came to do a dripping tap and you bought a cartridge do you
want a boiler service yeah it was a good boiler last time service you open it up you'll find a
pigeon nest in there like oh you need a new boiler yeah you know it could be it could be anything and
also people love this like i remember one of the best part of being a trades person is interacting
with customers you meet new people you learn new people some people are good some people less so uh
right or maybe not my cup of tea but you know interaction that's that's the point of it it's
no no that's great i mean it's an enabler for better customer service isn't exactly there
solving problems i've got some and transparency yeah and making a sort of a positive out of a
negative we haven't got the part let's see what it is the most efficient way of doing it yeah so your
journey yourself so you started as a plumber yes in the plumbing industry and now you're
in software that's a pretty big change yeah how are you finding that transition i love the most
process of learning and i think throughout becoming a plumber a gas engineer i'm still
gas safe registered i found the best part of it is learning hacking how to fix a boiler
sequences and learning all the all the like testings and that was so much fun to me like
then we went on to designing the systems for larger developments i've kind of got to a
position where we've done a lot residential on a smaller larger scale in position should i go
bigger with what i do which is very monotonous repetitive thing or should i go into commercial
the real switch was when the big developers screwed me over for a large amount of money
yeah and then i kind of took a step back to re-evaluate what i do how i do how i can do
it better i never intended to start a tech company yeah and when i pitched my idea to a couple people
that i knew and uh they thought it was great and they funded me right and then i had like you know
a heap of money and i was in a position where i had to execute it was quite scary because you've
never done it before like and also nobody ever done this before there are marketplaces where an
app like Deliveroo where everybody can list the vendors like different restaurants or different
merchants for instance what we do is completely different almost hyper local Amazon prime if you
like so you buy there and you get it delivered but you don't know which merchant for but it gets the
job done and you move on so i i love it because i learn every day yeah and that's a a step so
you've started at London is there plans to move to other cities yes um we we're currently with an M25
we we intended to launch Birmingham this show we had a few delays but we already do
have some merchants live in Birmingham so we're on a small scale piloting testing
because we didn't launch Birmingham we're actually pursuing more actively launching electrical side
in London yeah so there was one or two are we gonna go into different verticals or we're gonna
expand geographically but we we are pushing the boundaries of London with what we do already so
there must be a move in one way or another so we did a soft launch of Birmingham
and it's going to be probably announced in a couple months time and we're doing electrical
and our national partners they've got a strong electrical arm as well that they're supporting us
on so um it's it's fun so if i'm uh if i'm using your service i'm on site so i'm interacting with
with you and we're tracking with the SAAP-IT app i place my order through your platform pay you
and you're paying the that you're paying the supply chain that's correct so at the moment
we pay as you go so you buy materials and and they go into a funnel of delivery system uh you
can request an instant delivery which is in London within half an hour if you're on the outskirts M25
it could be like 40 minutes 45 uh there is also a function now to schedule delivery so you might be
on site now you're full finding something but you don't have time to deal with it right now
what you can do is actually book the delivery for next day yeah an exact time frame within like half
an hour 15 minutes accuracy turn up back again and the materials will arrive there so you don't
actually need to go to merchants if you happen to be in a merchants it's great to collect it
yeah but there is a aspect of procurement yeah again does your merchant have it maybe they're
going to have it next day maybe yeah it's going to be a few days quite rare parts and they even they
need to get in there is it a bit like Uber can you actually see it on the map for parts coming to be
honest we don't do this and the reason for it is because sometimes the items could be coming from
multiple different stores okay um we don't like that because it cost us double in deliveries yeah
but the aim right now is to make sure that the trades people get the goods on time
their trades people get the goods when they order them uh we'd like to facilitate and
an aspect of a procurement and sourcing what SNAP-IT does i think is one very big chunk of
the job that we're taking away from tradespeople and that's why we're really priding ourselves on
the service we're providing yeah i think it's a fantastic solution and i'm sure you're going to be
hearing more about it we're going to be following this we can't wait for it to expand to other
cities so we can give it a try out locally but victor fantastic and well done thank you very much