Since 1989, Midwest Tape has been providing media distribution services exclusively to public libraries, providing them with DVD’s, audiobooks, CD’s, Blue Ray, and Playaway products. As Midwest Tape is operating in a niche industry, finding the right government contracts to pursue can be a challenge; in this respect, BidNet has been an essential part of the company’s success.
With 42,000 audiobook titles available from 225 publishers and a wide variety of CDs and DVDs to keep up with, Midwest Tape’s staff is perpetually busy ensuring that the company has both the quantity and quality of products that its clients expect. Knowing that a bid aggregation service would help the company save time and money and allow them to focus on their core business, Janet Timm, Sales Coordinator and Bid Specialist at Midwest Tape, inquired about BidNet’s service when she began working at the company in 2006. Midwest Tape became a BidNet member soon afterward, and have been utilizing the service to grow their government business opportunities ever since.
From the beginning, Midwest Tape was most interested in BidNet for its exclusive Bid Alert® Bulletin - a one-page bid synopsis which provides details about open bids, awards and amendments - which saves the company time and resources when searching for government bid opportunities. Each morning, an employee at Midwest Tape quickly reviews the day’s Bid Alert® and decides which bids they want to evaluate further. Using commodity codes that are most relevant to the media distribution industry, BidNet’s Bid Alerts® are targeted specifically to the opportunities that Midwest Tape is most interested in. After deciding which bids are of interest, staff members can then access the bid documents of the most promising bids to obtain further information.
In addition, the company finds BidNet’s top-notch customer service extremely valuable. “The BidNet customer care department periodically checks in to make sure things are running smoothly and is available to assist Midwest Tapes’ employees as needed,” says Ms. Timm. After evaluating several different bid services, Midwest Tape decided BidNet was the best fit for their business and continues to use the service because they find it to be the most cost-effective service available.
