New virtual platform seeks to show seafood an easier way to trade

This year’s Seafood Expo North America (SENA) event brought industry technologists from far and wide to the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center for three days of dealing and demonstrations. The creators of Ocean Executive – a new online trading platform crafted specifically for the seafood industry – were among this gills-and-gadgets crowd, showing off a digital solution that could make seafood professionals’ jobs a whole lot easier in the trading realm moving forward.

“We are looking to introduce an alternative to the current buying and selling process within the seafood business today,” explained Mike Budreski, founder of Ocean Executive, to SeafoodSource regarding service’s overarching capability. Ocean Executive, in essence, provides seafood professionals with a virtual portal where they can place bids on products and offer up their own items for auction. Once a sales/ company profile is made, networks are built up by way of user-to-user invitation requests and user-to-user invitations to participate in private auctions. 

Much of e-commerce in seafood today is focused on the business-to-consumer (B2C) space, noted Budreski – Ocean Executive, meanwhile, seeks to broach and tackle the largely unchartered territory of virtual business-to-business (B2B) seafood trading. “A lot of companies are focused on B2C e-commerce right now and that's great, but you should also be looking to take advantage of opportunities to improve on B2B commerce also,” he said.

At SENA16, Budreski and the Ocean Executive team launched their private market auctions, which “allow buyers and sellers to connect online to their existing business connections though live/online auctions.” For the OE platform to succeed, participating companies need to actively participate in these private and open market auction systems.

Moving forward, the company intends to go live with its open marketplace, a space where OE users can post live bids and offers at pre-set locations and distribution centers. “These bids and offers will be viewable to all users around the world and they will have the ability to counter bid/offer, live... We are working with financial accrediting firms to make sure that these trades/transactions are backed and have the option to be insured,” concluded Budreski.