Canton Fair · Guangzhou · Phase 1
Four hundred stalls, and a list you can still read on the flight home.
Procure is a notes app for buyers walking the Canton Fair. At each stall you record the product, the seller, the booth number, the MOQ, the price per piece and the pieces per container, and photograph the product and the business card. Then you walk to the next stall.
The phone is the source of truth. Procure works with no signal at all, and nothing leaves the phone until you ask it to.
At the stall
Six numbers and two photographs
One note per stall, with the fields a buyer is actually quoted. Nothing else is asked for, because the hall is loud and the queue behind you is not getting shorter.
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Product
What it is, in your own words.
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Seller
The name on the stall.
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Booth number
So you can walk back to it on day three.
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MOQ
The minimum order quantity you were quoted.
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Price per piece
The figure the seller gave you.
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Pieces per container
With the price, this is what makes two stalls comparable.
A photograph of the product
Taken at the stall, because a written description of the fourteenth plastic basin of the morning will not bring it back.
A photograph of the business card
The card is how you reach the seller afterwards. Photograph it once and stop carrying a pocketful of them.
Offline
The phone is the source of truth
Every note and every photograph is written to the phone and stays there. Procure does not need a connection to record a stall, open a note, search the list or export it. In a hall with no usable signal that is the difference between a tool and a loading spinner.
Procure talks to a server only when you choose to: when you verify your email address, when you back up, and when you restore on a new phone. There is no background sync, and exporting is not a round trip either — the CSV is built on the phone and uploaded nowhere. Until you ask for a backup, your notes have never left the phone.
Afterwards
Export is a CSV
One file, generated on the phone, with a row for every note. Open it in whatever you already use to compare quotes. The file is built on the phone with no round trip to a server, and exporting it asks you to verify your email address first.
Phase 1 is notes. Procurement and shipping are not part of it.
Screens
Three screens, in the order you use them
The apps are still being built. These are the three screens the captures will show.
Get it
Install Procure
Android
Coming to Google Play. Android 8.0 or newer. There is no link yet because there is no page yet; when there is one, it will be here.
Coming to Google Play
iPhone
Coming to the App Store. There is no link yet because there is no page yet; when there is one, it will be here.
Coming to the App Store
Procure asks for your name and email when you first open it, and you can skip the rest: capturing notes, photographs and searching never need an account. Verifying that address is what unlocks backing up, restoring on a new phone and exporting a CSV. The first two move your notes off the phone; the export is built on the phone and goes nowhere but the file you save. There is no password: Procure emails a six-digit code to the address you give it.