More and more top shipping companies have laid down the law: get online or don’t expect to do business with us.

The good news: it’s incredibly easy to serve these important customers, win new business and dramatically cut your cost of sales. Just make sure you’re an approved supplier on ShipServ TradeNet, the industry’s trading platform for ship supplies.

Yes, this is blatantly promotional on our part but you can’t ignore the facts:

• As of Septemer 2009, over 140 top ship owner/managers and yards use TradeNet every day for their operational purchases
• These buyers manage over 4,700 ships spending over $1bn per annum – by far the largest buying community in the world!
• They do it because it saves time, money and effort
• If you’re TradeNet-ready, you’re more likely to be on the short list.

To sign up to TradeNet click here.

(Article taken from “The 10 Essentials of Online Marketing in Shipping” eBook)

We were also delighted that ISSA President, Jens Olsen, was kind enough to write to his members recently giving his support. As he said in the press release “This cooperation represents an excellent opportunity for our members to reach, cost-effectively, new customers and trade efficiently.” We’re really impressed by his vision and encouragement and are super-excited to be working with such as esteemed association.

Here’s Jens’ email:

I’m writing this email together with ShipServ, the maritime e-marketplace, as we’re pleased to announce a new initiative between ISSA and ShipServ.

As you may know ShipServ offers a range of web based services that allow suppliers to promote themselves to the global maritime buying community, as well as provide quotes and fulfill orders electronically.

Over 60,000 maritime buyers use ShipServ Pages every month to locate suppliers, with $1bn in goods and services being bought each and every year.

At our Conference in Istanbul we issued a press release announcing our new co-operation. ISSA will be launching a new area on ShipServ Pages, branded the “ISSA Zone”. The ISSA Zone will exclusively feature those ISSA members signed up to Pages, giving prominence to the ISSA community of high quality, accredited maritime suppliers.

We believe that services like ShipServ should be part of any forward-thinking supplier’s business, and are keen to encourage you to sign up. So we’re delighted to inform you that we have secured a special deal for ISSA members. A representative from ShipServ’s sales team in Manila will call you shortly to discuss things further. Please take the time to listen to what ShipServ can do for you.

Once again we fully endorse this exciting programme, but if you have any questions on ISSA’s involvement please contact ISSA Board Member Matti Kokkola at Matti.Kokkala@megroup.fi.

Kind regards

Jens Olsen,
President,
ISSA.

Here’s Freddy in action, describing some of our upcoming features. This grainy photo is the first public outing of some exciting new functionality coming soon. So watch this space!

If you’re going to be at any of the events, please come and say hello. We look forward to meeting you!

Coracle offers education solutions that combine the flexibility of eLearning with podcasting, webinars, interactive assessments, and tutor support to provide a one-stop shop for professionals looking to develop shipping knowledge.

Going forward we’ll be supporting Coracle’s Podcast series, available on iTunes or the Coracle website. Plus we’ll be supporting The Daily Draft, an email-based course on vessel types. We suggest you subscribe to both - they’re free after all!

Hopefully this will be the start of a beautiful relationship and we very much look forward to working with James Tweed and his team. You can also follow James on twitter.

Check out the video and let us know what you think. It all looks very futuristic to us.

_________________________________________

Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 11:26:16 -0000
Subject: Its a modern miracle!

Welcome to the Modern World of Ship Supply!
This exciting televisual motion picture with synchronized audio accompaniment explains all.

Please hover your pointing device over the chromo-image and say ‘Click!’ immediately (while manually depressing the digital button on your hand-operated cursor controller):

Mr R. Massey, Esq
Senior Vice Executive and Group Marketing Potentate
Televisual Division, North Region
ACME, An ACME Company
(Itself a division of ACME)

The presentation also includes the Supplier perspective, with a case study based around the Italian chandler, Mercandino.

Finally you also get a sneak preview of some exciting new developments coming soon.

The keynote presentation by Rohit Talwar, Global Futurist and author of ‘Designing your Future’ started the 2 days off in a great way for ShipServ - as Rohit nicely positioned the need for shipping companies to harness the power of the Internet. He even quoted some ShipServ stats, which was extremely flattering

There was lots of interest in our products and services - the booth was busy both days, with a number of deals struck during the event (which is always nice).

We also had 2 well attended seminar sessions and we’ll be loading a recording of the presentation “5 ways to save your way out of the economic downturn” very shortly.

Finally thanks to Mercandino for sponsoring the stand refreshments and to Imatech & Lagaay for co-sponsoring our champagne reception. Here’s to IMPA ‘10!!

And as our customer base extends into ares such as Oil, Gas & Energy we’re beginning to see a number of specialty vessels - such as semi-submersible drilling rigs (semisubs), Platform Supply Vessels (PSVs) and windmill installation vessels.

But don’t be embarrassed if you’re losing track of the various ship types out there. Our friends at CoracleOnline, the maritime e-learning company, run something called the Daily Draft. Its a free six-day course on commercial shipping delivered by email. It explains the main ship types and the job that shipping does in the world today. We’ve found it quite useful as a refresher/primer on the main ship types and the freight they carry. Why not give it a try? You can sign up here. You never know you might learn something.

To find out more about what ShipServ is doing at IMPA ‘09 click here.