Blur Group buyers and seller numbers surge 31%

21st Jul 2015 14:19

(ShareCast News) - Blur Group, which has created an online platform for companies to buy and sell services, has seen numbers of active users increase by almost a third over the last six months.The AIM-listed company's shares surged as it announced that numbers of buyers and service providers at the end of the first half of the year had risen 31% to roughly 65,000, from around 50,000 at the end of 2014, including new names such as Unilever and Home Retail Group.The number of projects listed on the Blur marketplace by 'enterprise buyers', that is those with at least 50 employees, also increased by 20% in the period.Moreover, existing enterprise customers, which included Danone and Solvay, returned to the marketplace to help contribute to a 75% increase in the proportion of repeat projects listed in the six-month period, with business areas such as market research, recruitment and e-learning, marketing solutions, and an online ordering platform.Chief executive Philip Letts said the company's transition to the enterprise-level clients became more evident in 2014 and it had "seen increasing momentum in H1 2015 in both the USA and Europe"."Added to this, with the introduction of our premium services in early 2015, the new buyer and service provider subscriptions in Q2, and soon, blur Data in Q3, we are driving up our gross margin."Blur shares were up 24.5% at 30.50 by 13:45 on Tuesday.