// AI for jan-san distributors
AI for janitorial supply distributors, tested on bids and site orders you already worked.
For distributors of cleaning chemicals, towel and tissue, can liners, foodservice disposables, corrugated, film and tape, selling to schools, hospitals, contract cleaners and plants. Start with supply bids for facility accounts, or site supply orders that arrive by the roll or the each and ship by the case. A free AI proof of concept tests your pick on copies of 20 to 30 that your desk already closed out, and nobody signs in to your ERP. Your reviewer, the one person who knows that desk best, makes the call.
- Start with
- Supply bids, or site supply orders
- You send
- Copies of 20 to 30 finished bids or orders, after an NDA
- Logins
- None: no ERP, bid portal or customer system
- Never
- A bid submitted, a contract price set, an order guide changed or an order placed
- Your reviewer
- Chosen by the owner before day one
- Price
- A range first, fixed before you sign
// Jobs we would test
Where the paper piles up at a jan-san house
Janitorial supply bids
A school district's item list, a college's clarification or a hospital price sheet, filled in line by line with your item, pack, case count, price source and any equal you would offer, for your bid desk to check and submit.
See the supply bids pageCleaning supply orders
Custodians' and site managers' orders by the roll, box or each, drafted as sales orders in the units you sell, with the refill that fits each building's dispensers and the right ship-to for each site.
See the supply orders pageCooperative and GPO sales reports
Sales reports for cooperative and group purchasing contracts, drafted from your invoice history by member and item, for your contracts manager to check before anything is sent.
Read the sales reports pageUsage reports by building
Usage by site and item for a contract cleaner or a facilities director, built from your invoice lines, with sudden jumps marked for the rep to ask about.
Read the usage reports page// Why bids and orders first
Your bid files and order history already hold the answers
A public bid is graded in public. Escambia County School District in Florida posts its past custodial supply tabulations and award notices online, and its bid documents let an award go by item, lot or partial lot, to more than one vendor. So each bid your team priced sits beside the sheet you submitted and, for a public account, the result on every line: an answer key a proof of concept can be scored against.
The association began on your side of the counter. ISSA was founded in 1923 by Alfred Richter as the National Sanitary Supply Association, starting with seven sanitary supply distributors. It now calls itself the association for cleaning and facility solutions, with more than 11,000 companies, organizations and individuals, building service contractors and in-house cleaning departments among them. Those are your customers, and most of what they buy comes through a bid, a contract or a standing order.
Many prices were settled somewhere else first. Sourcewell, a Minnesota local government unit and service cooperative, ran a 2024 janitorial supplies solicitation numbered 082724; one contract from it runs to October 31, 2028 and covers towel and tissue, can liners, dispensers and disposable foodservice products. Premier signed a national agreement for paper and janitorial supply distribution with AFFLINK, effective November 1, 2023, which its hospital members may use at their discretion. Rocklin Unified's 2024 to 2025 custodial bid says the district may use piggyback agreements. A draft has to say whether a price came from a bid, a cooperative award or a GPO agreement.
Schools buy green by statute. New York's Education Law 409-i has schools follow the Office of General Services' guidelines when buying cleaning and maintenance products, and OGS based its 2010 guidelines on Green Seal and EcoLogo standards wherever it could. Illinois' Green Cleaning Schools Act lets a school use up its stock first, and one that finds green products would raise its cleaning costs must say so in writing to the state's Green Government Coordinating Council each year.
The software knows the trade; the desk still types. Epicor, Advantive with its DDI System, and VAI each publish pages aimed at jan-san distributors, and VAI's lists price and cost carried to four decimal places among its features. A district's spreadsheet or a custodian's email still gets read and keyed by a person, so the test works from copies and exports, whatever you run.
One limit covers every job. The proof of concept never submits a bid, never sets a contract price, never changes a customer's order guide and never places an order. It drafts; a person on your team decides.
// How it runs
One desk, three steps
- Step 01
Copies, after the NDA
Send 20 to 30 finished examples of one job, bids with the sheets you submitted or site orders with the orders keyed from them, plus your item export. Anything that can't leave the building becomes a look-alike built with your reviewer.
- Step 02
Your reviewer scores it
The owner names the reviewer, usually the bid or contracts manager for bids and the lead customer service rep for orders. Success criteria go in writing, you get a price range for the live job, and each draft is compared with what your team actually did.
- Step 03
About 30 days live, after a yes
The same job runs on new bids or orders for roughly a month. Someone on your team approves every bid sheet before it is submitted and every order before it reaches your ERP. A second job is a decision for later, with its own price.
Every job carries its own price: a range before the proof of concept, then a fixed figure before you sign anything.
Rob sets the range on the call, once he knows how many bids or contract renewals you answer in a year, how many hand-keyed orders reach the desk each month, and how many branches share the work.
// Questions
What jan-san distributors ask first
Will the AI submit bids or set our contract prices?
Can it decide whether our equal meets a district's spec?
Does it change a customer's order guide or approved product list?
Which ERP do we need?
We also sell film, tape and boxes to plants. Is that in scope?
Rob Eason, founder
// Book a call with Rob
Start with last season's bid files.
Thirty minutes with Rob. He will ask who you are and your role, whether bids or orders cost your team more, and roughly how many of each you handle. Keep bid sheets and price files to yourself until the NDA is signed.
- Co-owned a 60-employee financial services firm and sold his share to his partner.
- Ran GOSO Technologies, a Boston solar company rated 5/5 across 24 Google reviews.
- 5/5 across 83 reviews in HighLevel's Certified Admin Directory.
- 4.3/5 from 6 Google reviews of Massmarket AI.
- Every directory and Google review, critical ones included, is shown word for word at massmarket.ai/reviews.
- Takes every proof-of-concept call himself.