No reliable information about the volume of this market could be found, however, according to some data, we are talking about 500-700 billion rubles a year. Here we have in mind all the services one way or another associated with the term “certification” - this is certification of conformity, declaration, various tests and so on. Otherwise, all this is sometimes called obtaining permits.

In this article we will not delve into various areas of certification and their features. It is important that this is a single market in which the same companies operate under the same specific laws.

How it works from the inside

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I think for many non-specialists it will be a discovery that the state delegates most of the certification functions to outside organizations, retaining for the most part an oversight role. The well-known Rostest is not a sticker on your phone. , and the Glory of the CPSU is not a person at all, but one of the organizations accredited for testing. Yes, this is FBU, but it works according to the same rules as private organizations. It's just that Rostest has the largest accreditation area, they can do a lot.

The label on your phone is called “mark of conformity when declaring compliance,” and in a particular case it can be obtained without the participation of Rostest. Any of you with a goal and an appropriate budget can create an organization that certifies phones, for example. It is very difficult, very expensive, but possible.

The accreditation process is managed by the Federal Accreditation Service (Rosaccreditation). Which, characteristically, again delegates most of the work to outside expert organizations.

Conventionally, accredited organizations can be divided into test centers (laboratories) and certification bodies. The centers conduct tests and issue protocols, the authorities draw up certificates and declarations on the basis of these protocols.

Under the proud, state name “Certification Body” there usually lies a small company of several (less often dozens) employees who are busy with hungry cold calls and paperwork. Often, such companies do not have experts on their staff, and cannot themselves advise their customers. There are about 1000 accredited certification bodies in Russia. In recent years, the state has taken seriously for them, and many unscrupulous companies have already lost their accreditation.

Testing traditionally engaged in specially for this HZI SI, various research institutes and other FSUE and FBU. The fact is that for testing, as a rule, you need very expensive equipment and a staff of specialists. And if the equipment is not difficult to buy - it would be money, then the situation with the staff is very complicated. State institutions sometimes have unique equipment, experienced personnel and even learned how to attract young people. However, in such organizations there is absolutely no understanding of commercial activities, sales, customer service, advertising, finally. There are only a few purely commercial laboratories and testing centers; they are usually small and narrowly specialized. Often they are organized by former employees of scientific research institutes with specific concepts about doing business.

All this opens up the possibility for the existence of assorted “certification centers” - intermediaries, intermediaries, interlayers and other gaskets. The scale of such companies is from hundreds of employees to the desks of the name of one person working from home and proudly referred to as any PromSertTestEkspertiza LLC.
Their activities are not specifically regulated; they re-order work from the Authorities, laboratories, and even from each other. And if you are accustomed to thinking contemptuously of a “buy-sell” type of business, know that you in vain insult honest traders. Intermediaries usually work on a “sell-buy” scheme. They “sell” the service to you, they definitely take an advance payment, for which they “buy” the same service from another organization, only cheaper. Margin is usually 20-50%. This scheme allows you to start a business literally from scratch.

One of the most complex and expensive services is testing to validate the type of measuring equipment (SI). Any measuring instrument used in the field of state regulation must be of an approved type by Rosstandart. This, for example, domestic water meters and electricity. Distributing columns at gas stations. Or complex monitoring systems for NPP parameters. For the type approval of the SI it is necessary to pass the appropriate tests and prepare a lot of documents, which can cost from hundreds of thousands (same counters) to millions of rubles (systems).

How it happens in life

And here, some small company, under the general trend of import substitution, is developing some really cool and necessary thing. The gizmo is ready and working, pilot production has been established, there are potential customers and it seems that the business is small - to get some pieces of paper on the product. And then it turns out that developers are very vaguely aware of what they actually need, who does it and how much it costs. They are trying to apply to the same Rostest - there they reluctantly answer that you guys first decide what you need, fill out the application correctly and assemble the package of documents according to the form. And then in the queue. And do not forget to pay the bill on stopitsot tysch. Following!

The customer, quickly tired of Rostest, goes to the Internet and finds a dozen three intermediaries on the first pages of the search engine issue. In the first, no one responds to requests by mail. In the second they demand to immediately provide a full package of documents and for some reason an extract from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. In the third they ask for prepayment for consulting first. In the fourth, they promise to send a commercial offer, but they never send it. In the fifth, sixth and seventh, the same technical questions have to be clarified to the manager, who seems to understand nothing. And finally, he finds a company with a beautiful website and a selling landing page. On the phone, the sweet lady confidently explains with an exciting voice what, where and how much to pay, and he, of course, agrees.
If the mediator is experienced, he knows for sure who can do this or that work, how to enter the same Rostest, how to prepare documents, and a lot of other nuances. He will take a one-and-a-half or double price from the customer for this knowledge.
But more often it happens that the mediator has no idea how to do it. The main thing is to take a prepayment, but we'll see. At best, it threatens with ugly stretching of dates (sometimes for years!), At worst - the mediator will endlessly feed the Customer with breakfast, and then disappear.

What to do

The whole situation on the market can be called, to put it mildly, unhealthy. The whole idea of ​​certification was compromised by the difficulty of obtaining the necessary permits. But how can a bona fide manufacturer or distributor find a good performer, for reasonable money, without explaining his task to dozens of incompetent people by sending requests for controls?

The decision, in general, has long been invented, it is contests or tenders. But the classic tender platforms will not help formulate the task and collect the documents, they are not easy to get started, they have lots of strange rules, and finally the performer with the lowest price wins, which is not always good. Therefore, my colleagues and I decided to create a platform devoid of these shortcomings, and dedicated specifically to certification.

Here you will be helped to formulate a task, collect documentation and launch a competition. The customer chooses the winner himself - for the price, reputation, or just for the pleasant voice of the manager. Unlike tender platforms, communication between the customer and the bidder during the competition is not prohibited, the customer can indicate their contacts. Soon the rating system will appear with asterisks and reviews. And the most important thing is that it is absolutely free for Customers, and it will always be free. Such a business model.

UPD0: Frankly speaking, this is a startup at the testing stage of an idea, molded in between work breaks over several weekends. However, we have experts, and we believe that we are doing something necessary. Together we can make the certification market cleaner and more transparent!

UPD1: who does not like the site - waiting for specific proposals for revision! Competition on the site itself.