I launched GPO — a tiny tool for pooling a team purchase and collecting vendor quotes
I launched GPO (Group Purchase Organizer) today: https://gpo.app
It is a brand-new MVP. The job is small and specific.
You start a buying round: item, quantity, specs. You get a shareable vendor link. Vendors submit quotes. You (the organizer) see them in one list.
No accounts. Vendors do not need to sign up to quote. Organizers do not need to sign up to start a round.
I built a tiny version because most “procurement” software assumes a purchasing department, approvals, and a catalog. A lot of small teams and office managers are just trying to buy one thing together — chairs, a printer run, a box of parts — and the work is still: write the request, chase vendors in email, paste replies into a spreadsheet. I wanted that loop without the stack.
The product UI is English-first. The site is available in 32 languages.
If you actually pool purchases — office manager, ops, light procurement, a small team that buys as a group — I would rather hear what is missing than a polite “congrats.” What would make you use this once, and what would make you not send the vendor link?
GPO here means Group Purchase Organizer, not the U.S. Government Publishing Office.
Love the anti-bloat approach—procurement tools are usually massive overkill for small office purchases. One thing that might hold an organizer back from sending the link to vendors: trust/deliverability. Vendors might think an unauthenticated link from an unknown domain is spam. Adding custom branding (or 'Sent on behalf of [Company Name]') would make vendors much more confident clicking and submitting quotes.
That's a fair reason not to send the link. We don't have accounts or company branding yet — the vendor URL is just gpo.app plus a round id, no login, no "from Acme Facilities" header. Some vendors will treat that as spam; that's honest.
What exists today: the organizer can copy a short note with the link ("no account — open this, enter price and lead time"). The quote page states this is a Group Purchase Organizer request for a specific item/qty/specs, not a signup, and not the U.S. Government Publishing Office.
"Sent on behalf of [Company]" is the right next step. It isn't in the MVP. I don't want to fake a letterhead we can't back.
The part you're underselling is the chase, not the collection. In every group-buy I've run, writing the request and reading the quotes took maybe 20 minutes total. The other four days were following up with the two vendors who hadn't replied, and then remembering to follow up again. If GPO only puts the replies in one list, it saves me the spreadsheet — but the spreadsheet was never the painful bit.
Concretely: on the organizer's round view, show who hasn't quoted and how long it's been, and let me send a one-click nudge from there. That turns "I have to remember to email Vendor B on Thursday" into something the tool holds instead of me. That's the difference between a nice utility and something I'd reach for on the next round.
On the vendor side, aryan_sinh and shipnote are right that the link is the whole bet — but I'd add that vendors don't ignore forms because forms are hard, they ignore them because nothing happens if they don't reply. A visible deadline on the quote page ("closes Friday, 3 others quoting") does more for response rate than any UX change.
One thing worth measuring alongside sent-vs-started: rounds where every invited vendor actually quoted. That's the number that tells you the chase went away rather than just moved.
You're right that the list is the easy part. GPO today stores quotes in one place; it does not know who was invited, so it cannot show who hasn't quoted or send a one-click nudge. Organizers can close quoting, but the vendor page does not show a deadline or how many others are quoting. Follow-up still lives in your inbox.
I think it mostly depends on how I already communicate with that vendor. If forms are already part of the workflow, I’d send the link without thinking twice. But if we normally just use email or chat, I’m not sure I’d ask them to change that workflow just for me.
That's a real split. If you already quote over email or chat, GPO doesn't replace that thread — the vendor still has to open a form. The organizer page has a short note you can paste into the email you were going to send, with the quote link in it. If they would ignore a form, they will ignore this one too.
What would make me send the vendor link: the URL is something I can paste into an email without explaining a product. If the first screen is the quote form with item and quantity already filled, not a homepage, I would send it. What would stop me: a page that asks the vendor to join anything before they can type a price.
The no-account bet is the right one. I would measure whether the organizer actually sent the link, not whether they started a round. Started-and-never-sent is the same failure as a form nobody submitted.
That's the design. The vendor share URL opens the quote form with item, quantity, and specs already on the page. No account and no join step before they type a price. If a page asked them to sign up first, I wouldn't send it either. Whether the organizer actually sent the link is the right test; we don't measure that yet.
The interesting part may be the vendor link rather than the buying round itself.
The organizer can adopt a new workflow pretty easily, but the vendor has to cooperate with it too. Curious whether that’s proving to be the harder adoption point.
That's the bet we're testing. The vendor side is an open form — no account, item/qty/specs already filled — so the ask is closer to "reply on this page" than "join a tool." We do not have enough real rounds yet to know whether vendors actually do it.
What I'm watching: whether organizers hesitate to send the link because it looks like extra work for the supplier. If you've seen vendors refuse a form like that, the specific friction (login, trust, format) is more useful than a guess.
That makes sense. The fact that the vendor can respond without creating an account should make the real adoption test much easier to observe.