Website Making Ripples in Water Industry

Cities and utilities use SplashLink to find companies that can help them complete projects related to sewer systems, water treatment plants and other infrastructure. Companies use the site to find projects that they can bid on. And they both use it to hunt for grants and other funding set aside for water-related projects

Since last fall, the Beachwood-based website has signed up hundreds of paid subscribers, all of whom are somehow tied to the water industry.

The subscriber base includes several Cleveland-area cities — such as Akron, Willoughby and Eastlake — and companies.

For instance, the Cleveland Water Alliance has about 45 members, and well over half of them are SplashLink subscribers, according to Stubbs, executive director of the group,

No other website makes it so easy for people in the water industry to find jobs, to find money and to find each other, according to Stubbs.

“It’s definitely solving a complex problem,” he said.

The alliance is one of three industry organizations that has been promoting SplashLink to its members. It has other allies as well.

The company has raised a total of $815,000 from 11 individual investors, including billionaire Home Depot cofounder Kenneth Langone and Chuck Fowler, the former CEO of Fairmount Minerals (now called Fairmount Santrol) in Chesterland. SplashLink vice president Jason Wuliger said he had a family connection to Langone.

Fowler is a member of the Cleveland Water Alliance. It also won a $100,000 grant from the Innovation Fund at Lorain County Community College in December.

And in late June, the company formed another partnership, this time with a publisher: Scranton Gillette Communications of Arlington Heights, Ill.

That company, which owns three water-related publications, is promoting SplashLink to its subscribers and working to build awareness about the website, Wuliger said.

The importance of listening

Today, SplashLink has 13 employees. Wuliger was the second person to come on board in October 2013. The first was CEO Ebie Holst.

She arrived at the idea because she has an unusual hobby: Tracking major trends that drive significant investments and other changes in the world.

Over time, that hobby drove her to become more interested in the growing demand for water around the world — and the strain that is being put on water supplies.

So about five years ago she started talking to local companies in the water industry.

She asked how they acquired customers and addressed problems in their industry. She asked about whether they cared about water problems in China.

At first, the Northeast Ohio native was thinking about water-related challenges as a possible economic development opportunity for the region. After all, she spent several years working as a consultant for local economic development groups since moving back to the Cleveland area in 2001.

But as she learned about the problems that companies in the water industry faced, she started thinking a technological solution might help.

Which makes sense, given that she spent the 1990s in Silicon Valley, serving as a consultant for a few pre-Google search engine companies in the process.

“The more I listened, the more my technology hat started to come back on,” she said.

So what were the problems in the water industry?

Companies have a hard time finding what they need when they need it, Holst said.

She gave an example: If a city needs a contractor to work on its water system, it might put a request for qualifications up on its website and in a newspaper. And that request might end up on one of the websites that aggregate all sorts of construction-related projects.

But the water projects can get lost on those sites, and some that aren’t construction related may not appear at all, she said.

Plus, those sites don’t aggregate funding opportunities, which has proven popular with SplashLink’s subscribers.

The site’s subscribers pay different rates: Cities and utilities — the solution seekers — pay $249 per year per user, though the price comes down for customers with more users.

Contractors and other companies — the problem solvers — pay $429 per user, before volume discounts.

SplashLink will probably be worth the cost, according to Eastlake Mayor Dennis Morley. He’s looking for funding that could help the cash-strapped city cover the cost of sewer and wastewater treatment projects.

“Even if we find one thing to help us, that will cover the cost,” he said.

Source: Cleveland Business

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• IT
• Industrial Communication
• Communications Strategy