Vendor City Social Business Referral Service Launches

July 1st brings the launch of a business finding search engine that is powered by referrals, Vendor City. The purpose of Vendor City is to make finding a trusted business who will do a good job for you easier and less of a headache. I think it is a solid concept, though it needs a little work.

Vendor City only lists business that are referred by others. Even when you sign up your business is not really "listed" outside of your profile. It has to be recommended by another Vendor City user to be included in main business search.

Once a business is listed, it gets rated, reviewed, voted on and otherwise ranked by the users of Vendor City who have actually worked with the business. How can Vendor City guarantee so many people on their site will know a business? Because they are keeping it real by keeping it local.

JC Cameron, President of Vendor City, was kind enough to talk with me a bit via email about the product launch. This little start up has big dreams, and while they are only in limited regions right now, look for them to go big very soon. Cameron summarized the goals of Vendor City by saying:

"We built this site because we, as entrepreneurs and business owners, have consistently struggled (until now) with finding good vendors. Everyone knows that word-of-mouth referrals are the best way to find good vendors and partners, but it can be hard getting those referrals when you most need them. So, we’ve built a site enabling you to access the referrals 24/7 and this gives you a chance to find the best vendors and gives the best vendors a chance to get more business."

He went on to mention planned future partnerships with Hoovers, the Better Business Bureau, Chambers of Commerce and other organizations to help potential customers further vet the qualifications of business beyond the word of mouth referrals and ranking system. Another tick in the "doing it right" column has Vendor City rolling out with an obvious plan for making money - a rarity in social media starts ups these days.

He said the site will be rolling out features over time on a scalability plan (taking a lesson from Twitter's woes, here, perhaps). Among those planned features are groups, friends, and expanded profiles. Once those features go live in the future the ratings will carry more weight or less for you based on who you know that made the recommendation, another nice feature. Overall, this site has some standard beta glitches, mainly in ease and intuitiveness of navigation, but I score it high for having a solid implementation and monetization plan, a useful service and clear goals. I'll be following this one.