Office for Product Safety and Standards- Online Marketplaces Product Search Software

Descriptions

Update: This is a further request for information based on the previous below Pre-Market Engagement Notice. Further to the UK2 preliminary market engagement notice published on 11 July 2025 (identifier 2025/S 000-039328), the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) is looking for the market to provide further input to help guide any resulting tender process. Previously the market has responded to OPSS’ request for information on the availability of Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) packages that will enable OPSS to gather data on harmful products on the online market (Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Temu and Ali Express together with smaller webshops and social media markets selling products within the UK). This supplementary request is for the market to provide information on its tendering preferences and pricing models to enable OPSS to ensure any resulting tender is accessible to all bidders and any barriers which could deter a supplier from bidding, are considered (and removed where possible). You are requested to respond to the following questions: 1) Would a tender process involving multiple stages / multiple staggered responses be more desirable than a single stage / single response process? It is anticipated that the overall bidding timescales would be the same regardless of number of stages involved in the process. We are particularly interested in the challenges any resulting tender would place on the resources available to you and whether a multi-stage or single stage approach would enable you to manage this requirement and your other business opportunities / commitments more effectively. 2) How would you propose charging for the online market data gathering service (e.g. a flat fee, an annual subscription, price per ‘scrape’, price per page searched etc.). We do not require your specific pricing, rather the type of model you would use to calculate the charges to OPSS. 3) OPSS’ annual budget is ~£400k per annum. Currently, OPSS are searching for over 3000 products on the recall list (Product Safety Alerts, Reports and Recalls - GOV.UK). For this procurement, OPSS would look to run searches on initially 7 online marketplaces, with the potential for this to increase to 56. Currenly, OPSS has 21 individuals running manual searches on marketplaces, spending approximately 660 hours per month doing manual sweeps]. Are you able to deliver an appropriate solution to OPSS based on the expected budget, and current and future usage? Please respond by 9am (BST) Monday 26th January 2025 via email to commercialddat@businessandtrade.gov.uk . Please note, this is not a commitment from DBT / OPSS to proceed with procuring a solution. At this stage we are still gathering information to determine how we can support the market by designing a tender process that enables potential suppliers to bid for and deliver a COTS solution which meets our budget and functional requirements. There is no guarantee that any resulting tender will align exactly with proposals made by the market to this notice. We reserve the right to change and amend the budget, functional requirements and timescales as necessary to meet our financial, operational and delivery needs. This is a request for information (RfI) The Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) are looking to understand if there are existing Commercial of The Shelf (COTS) software packages that will allow them to gather data on harmful products on the online market. At a minimum, OPSS will need the ability to gather data on products on the following online marketplaces: - Amazon - eBay - Etsy - Temu - Ali Express OPSS would also like the ability to capture product information from smaller, individual webshops and social media markets, selling products within the UK. The need for OPSS to get complete, accurate and quality data is the foundation to this discovery and will enable the fulfilment of other additional requirements that OPSS can benefit from pertaining to product searching. The desired results that the requirements aim to achieve as part of this work is: • Efficiencies in product searching • Better monitoring of previously delisted products • Ability to monitor seller activity • Better insights into problematic products • Increase in number of non-compliant product found/taken down • Increase number of prosecutions These outcomes will help enable OPSS to proficiently identify harmful products in the UK market and ensure consumers and businesses can buy and sell products with confidence. We are issuing this request for information to understand if the above software is currently available at COTS software. Please contact commercialddat@businessandtrade.gov.uk to request access to the full list of current expected functional requirements. Please respond by 9am (BST) Monday 28th July 2025 via email to commercialddat@businessandtrade.gov.uk with confirmation on whether this is a piece of software that your company would be able to provide. Please note, there is not commitment from DBT to proceed with procuring a solution. Currently, we are solely gathering information on the curent market and to understand if there are is an existing solution in the market that meets our needs. There is no guarantee that any potential procurement that occurs will be like-for-like with the requirements in this notice, and the Department for Business and Trade (DBT)/OPSS reserves the right to change and amend the requirements as they see fit. Please note that the estimated contract value and contract start dates within this notice are unknown and not confirmed. At this stage, DBT/OPSS is only gathering information from the market. Any eventual procurement that may arise from this RfI may not be of the same value or contract length as stated in this notice.