Brisbane startup Explorate wants to become the shipping industry’s answer to Webjet

TWO young Brisbane entrepreneurs hope to turn the world of logistics on its head with a freight booking platform that is the shipping industry’s answer to Webjet.

Alex Ewart and Conor Hagan from Explorate. Picture: Mark Cranitch.

TWO young Brisbane entrepreneurs hope to turn the world of logistics on its head with a freight booking platform that is the shipping industry’s answer to Webjet.

Alex Ewart, 28, and 35-year-old Conor Hagan identified a need for faster, smarter and more economical way of shipping and came up with Explorate, the first on-demand ocean freight booking platform that allows importers and exporters (shippers) to book directly with carriers.

“It means a smarter, more efficient international supply chain and that means increased productivity, and global competitiveness,” Mr Ewart said.

Mr Hagan, who arrived from Ireland as a backpacker 10 years ago, and Sunshine Coast-raised Mr Ewart, met while they were working in freight forwarding in Brisbane.

And this is where they developed their analogy – just as freight forwarding is a travel agent for logistics, Explorate is the Webjet or Trivago that gives their users the power of choice.

“We often spoke about things that needed changing in the industry,” Mr Ewart said. “I pitched what turned out to be a pretty substandard idea to Conor and we realised we could work together to make a positive change.”

They spent six months working on his initial idea, coming up with various concepts and developments until finally being satisfied they had the right formula.

“We realised we were about to disrupt the very industry we worked for, by allowing customers to cut out the middleman and deal directly with shipping lines, just as Webjet does with airline bookings,” Mr Hagan said.

Struggling for vendor buy-in via the shipping lines regional offices, they visited the headquarters of the major European shipping lines in Hamburg, Copenhagen, Marseille and Geneva.

“We had little more than a pitch deck to get the shipping lines to buy in but they thankfully obliged,” Mr Hagan said.

The on-demand container booking platform was then tested with Brisbane-based importers and exporters and delivered stellar results, surprising even its developers.

One Queensland small-to-medium enterprise was able to reduce its ocean freight spend by 62 per cent and its end-to-end freight spend by 55 per cent – all priced and booked in less than an hour.

“It’s an exceptional case but it does demonstrate the time and cost savings that are available to Queensland shippers if they’re willing to try new ways of operating,” Mr Ewart said.

Members of the federal government’s Entrepreneurs Program and recipients of a federal Accelerating Commercialisation grant as well as Advance Queensland’s Ignite Ideas Fund, the duo are now planning to raise more funds so they can release the product to the market.

“It’s time we moved on from the garage we call our office,” they said.