By Ang Yiying & Yeo Sam Jo

A CLUTCH of businesses have set up shop here, making providing convenience their game.

Some pitch themselves as your personal 'gofer', offering you a personal service, others tap the Internet or their knowledge base to get you the product or service you want. Both are essentially middlemen who count on you being willing to pay for a service.

Take ResidentButler, a modern-day butler based in Maplewoods, a condominium in Bukit Timah.

The business was set up by real-estate agent

David Lim, 45, about two years ago, when he saw that his neighbours needed renovations or other household jobs done but did not have the time to hunt down contractors.

When ResidentButler gets a call from a neighbour, he taps his pool of contractors to attend to the task - and becomes the 'point person' for it, to the point where he will send the workmen back to redo a job done unsatisfactorily.

The result: The home owner is saved the hassle.

Asked about the cost of his service, Mr Lim said: 'It's not the cheapest, but it's not the most expensive either.' About 60 units of the 697-unit condominium use his services, he said.

Another business is TheSearchEngine, a website dedicated to hunting down items for its customers. What it sells is the knowledge of where to get the items. Customers pay a $5 sign-up fee, after which they can put in requests.

The website is run by four people who physically track down a requested item or something similar, take a photo of it and send it to the customer.

If the customer wants the item, he pays $15 for the address of the location to be sent to him. He can also have the item bought on his behalf and delivered.

The website has had only about 10 customers in the half year or so it has been in business, said its founder Willy Ling, 21, who is waiting to enter university.

Will these ideas take off?

ResidentButler customer and Maplewoods resident Prabha Sreenivas, 42, thinks they will. Her

family calls Mr Lim about once every two months for household repairs. She said: 'It's a great business idea. We don't really have to look around.'

Polytechnic student Grace Chan, 19, who got a white floral dress with TheSearchEngine's help, said: 'I really wanted the dress but couldn't find it on my own. If someone else can shop for you, why not?'

Not all middlemen services do well.

Formerly popular food delivery website dabao.sg, which took orders for well-known hawker fare and delivered them to customers' doorstep at extra cost, folded last year because of high operating costs.

Associate Professor Prem Shamdasani of the National University of Singapore Business School said expatriates may be more receptive to paying for convenience, and that Singaporeans tend to be value-seekers.

But a middleman service with a good concept will have to deal with competition from new players, he noted, since barriers to entry are low. Suppliers may also offer services directly, which cuts out the middleman.

Prof Shamdasani said the key thing for middlemen services is to build up trust.

And this is what ResidentButler's Mr Lim hopes will sustain his business. He gets himself known to his neighbours and builds up relationships with them.

This article was first published in The Straits Times.