A Canadian founder transformed safety consulting from a fragmented process into a fast reliable and scalable digital marketplace powered by Shipturtle. Businesses can now access qualified safety experts with clarity speed and confidence.
When Businesses Need Safety Expertise Fast, Marketplaces Must Scale Even Faster
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TLDR (Skimmable Bullets)
- Founder Evan Mercer spent years watching small Canadian businesses struggle to find reliable safety consultants for urgent compliance needs.
- His vision was to build a platform connecting companies with qualified safety experts; fast, transparent, and structured.
- His initial setup had no live website, no vendor dashboards, and no bidding or appointment workflows.
- He wanted a marketplace modeled after top global platforms; Taskrabbit, Thumbtack, Rover, but tailored for safety compliance.
- Shipturtle became the silent operational engine powering vendor onboarding, service listings, bidding flows, appointment bookings, and automated payouts.
- The marketplace now supports structured consultant dashboards, professional search features, and scalable workflows for a growing nationwide ecosystem.
This digital shift allows Canada’s businesses to access safety expertise with clarity, speed, and confidence.
The Founder Story
Before launching the marketplace, Evan Mercer spent nearly a decade advising SMBs across Alberta. He frequently witnessed scramble-mode situations, rushed audits, emergency response requests, and last-minute safety assessments.
One incident shaped everything.
A small manufacturing unit in Edmonton needed a full safety assessment by Monday. With no directory or trusted resource, they relied entirely on Evan’s personal contacts. When they said, “We just don’t know where to find trustworthy people,” it clicked.
Businesses didn’t lack safety awareness, they lacked access.
They had no way to compare pricing, verify expertise, or find the right consultant on time.
Evan envisioned a structured marketplace where:
- Businesses post requirements
- Consultants bid
- Pricing and availability are transparent
- Communication and payments happen in one place
But with no website, no bidding engine, and no appointment flow, this vision needed a real backbone.
That’s when he discovered Shipturtle.
Why Safety Consulting Is a Complex Marketplace
Safety consulting demands more than a basic service directory. It involves:
- Highly specialised services like audits, hazard assessments, and compliance planning
- Projects that vary by scope, duration, and urgency
- Provincial regulatory differences
- The need for transparent bidding
- Structured consultant profiles with certifications
- Reliable, automated payout cycles
Evan didn’t want a simple listing platform.
He wanted a trust engine that enabled accurate, fast, and compliant matching.
Building from Zero
Evan started with only a Shopify account. No service catalog, vendor portal, or payment workflow. Yet he knew the platform had to:
- Mirror global service giants like Taskrabbit and Rover
- Support service listings instead of products
- Enable bidding, bookings, and automated payouts
- Scale nationwide
- Deliver a fully branded consultant experience
Shipturtle’s roadmap made the entire build possible, complete site setup, dashboards, workflows, automations, and matching logic.
“I built this marketplace because businesses deserve fast access to qualified safety consultants without confusion delays or uncertainty.”
Multi-Platform Consultant Onboarding
Shopify Consultants – Smooth and Fast
Experienced consultants onboarded easily with auto-account creation, clean pricing setup, and a professional dashboard.
Wix or Social-Profile Consultants – Guided Simplicity
For consultants new to digital tools, Shipturtle enabled simple listings, CSV uploads, unified dashboards, and easy messaging.
Custom-Site Consultants – Structured Yet Flexible
Shipturtle handled advanced onboarding through attribute mapping, booking flows, and consistent communication.
Across the board, consultants finally had a structured digital workspace.
The Operational Backbone
Evan’s priority wasn’t design, it was operational clarity. Shipturtle powered:
- Service bookings and appointment workflows
- Bidding on business requirements
- Automated commission-based payouts
- A Rover-style search engine
- Consultant dashboards for services, quotes, orders, bookings, and communication
- Status updates, approvals, and notifications
- Full white-label branding
For the first time, safety consultants across Canada had a unified, professional, digital system.
The Turning Point
Feedback changed everything.
Consultants said: “This is the first platform built for us.”
Businesses said: “We finally know where to find qualified consultants.”
Listings grew, bids improved, and the marketplace became the go-to destination for safety expertise.
The industry had been waiting for exactly this.
Shipturtle as the Engine of Scale
Shipturtle quietly powers:
- Multi-platform service syncing
- Real-time pricing
- Attribute mapping
- Booking and communication workflows
- Automated payouts
- Catalog moderation
- Appointment scheduling
- Search and filtering
- Notifications
- API-based custom workflows
Invisible but mission-critical.
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68%
of Canadian SMEs report that finding a reliable safety consultant takes longer than completing the compliance task itself.
The Final Transformation
Today, Evan’s platform is a scalable, consultant-friendly ecosystem built for the future:
- Stable workflows
- Transparent bidding
- Intuitive dashboards
- Canada-wide expansion
- Room for new safety categories and services
The manufacturing unit that needed help by Monday became the catalyst.
Now, no business in Canada has to scramble again.
Evan didn’t just build a marketplace, he built access.
FAQs
1. How does the safety consulting marketplace match businesses with qualified consultants?
The platform uses structured service listings, certifications, skill tags and availability filters along with bidding workflows to match the right consultant for each business need.
2. Can multiple consultants bid on the same safety requirement?
Yes. Businesses submit a request and several consultants can respond with quotes enabling transparent comparison and faster decision making.
3. How do consultants manage bookings and communication?
Consultants receive orders and appointment requests directly in their dashboard where they can message clients manage schedules and track project status.
4. Are payouts automated for consultants?
Yes. Shipturtle automates commission based settlements and ensures timely payouts through integrated payment gateways.
5. Can consultants list multiple services with different pricing structures?
Yes. They can create detailed service listings with hourly fixed or project based pricing along with attributes certifications and availability settings.
6. How does the platform ensure service quality and trust?
Every consultant completes onboarding with profile verification service approval and performance tracking through reviews and successful project history.
7. Does the marketplace support urgent or time sensitive safety requests?
Yes. The system is built for rapid responses from consultants which is crucial in compliance driven and emergency scenarios.
8. Can this model scale across multiple provinces?
Absolutely. The backend supports region based services provincial rules and consultant segmentation enabling nationwide expansion.
About The Author
Dhyan
Dhyan is a Product and Growth Manager at Shipturtle, where he leads go to market strategy, customer research, and the complete growth engine for the platform. He works closely with product, sales, and marketing teams to shape how marketplace operators discover, evaluate, and scale with Shipturtle.
Before joining Shipturtle, Dhyan worked in marketing for a cosmetics brand. He has seen the shift from traditional retail and sales to online commerce and understands the ground realities that many founders do not openly discuss. This experience helps him relate to marketplace builders who are managing real products, real customers, and real operational challenges. He writes with empathy because he has been through the same journey and understands how demanding it can be to build a multivendor business that runs smoothly.
Dhyan focuses on marketplace strategy, operational clarity, growth thinking, and the day to day challenges that founders face when trying to scale their business on Shopify. His writing is simple, practical, and shaped by real world scenarios.
When he is not working on marketplace content, Dhyan is usually testing new growth ideas or attempting pottery which never goes well and always becomes a funny story.