Responding to inquiries

If you're a provider, the open inquiry board at /trade-hub?mode=inquiries is a feed of incoming work. This article covers the response side: who can reply, what the form does, what statuses mean.

Who can respond

A response is a public commitment to do work for the inquiry author. To submit one you need:

• An authenticated account — anonymous visitors can browse but not respond.
• An active business profile — the inquiry author needs a real company on the other end of the quote.
• You can't respond to your own inquiry. Self-replies are blocked.
• Only one response per business per inquiry. If you've already replied, you'll need to withdraw the existing one before posting a new one (see Withdrawing below).

If any of those gates fails, the Respond button is hidden on the detail page and a small banner explains why.

Opening the form

Click any inquiry card on the public board → you land on /inquiries/{id}. If you're allowed to respond, a Respond button appears in the Responses section header. Click it to expand the inline form.

Fields

Message (required)

Free-form text. This is the pitch.

A useful response usually includes:

• A 1-line summary of what you can do for the request.
• Concrete numbers where possible — turnaround time, lead time, hours of operation.
• Constraints the author should know about (minimum order, geographic limits, certifications you hold or don't).
• A next step — "DM me to discuss spec", "I'll send a draft contract on acceptance", etc.

Price + currency (optional)

A decimal amount and a currency. You can quote in any of the supported currencies — the author isn't restricted to their own. If you leave the price blank, you're declaring interest without a number; useful when the scope still needs scoping.

If you do quote a number, the currency selector is active and uses the same list as listings.

What happens after you post

Your response immediately appears on the inquiry's detail page with status ACTIVE. The inquiry author sees it in their dashboard and on the public detail page; other browsing users see it too — responses are public so the inquiry's "conversation" is transparent.

You can find your own response anytime under /dashboard/trade-hub → Responded view. See Managing your Trade Hub.

Statuses

A response moves through three states. Only you and the inquiry author can change it:

• ACTIVE — your default after posting. Visible to everyone, the author can accept it.
• WITHDRAWN — you (the responder) soft-removed it. Hidden from the public list, but kept in your dashboard for audit. Once withdrawn, you may post a new response on the same inquiry.
• ACCEPTED — the author chose your response. The inquiry auto-closes, the response gets a green border + Accepted badge on the public page.

Withdrawing

If your situation changes — you found different work, you mis-quoted, the spec doesn't fit after a closer look — withdraw rather than leaving an inaccurate response in the wild.

Two ways:

• On the public inquiry detail (/inquiries/{id}), the Withdraw button shows next to your own ACTIVE response.
• In your dashboard /dashboard/trade-hub → Responded, the same button is in the row's actions.

Withdrawn responses are removed from the public list and won't be shown to the inquiry author or other browsing providers. They stay visible in your own dashboard so you can see your full history.

What author acceptance does

When the inquiry author clicks Accept on your response:

1. Your response status flips ACTIVE → ACCEPTED.
2. The parent inquiry status flips OPEN → CLOSED, with closedAt set to now.
3. Other ACTIVE responses on the same inquiry stay ACTIVE — providers see the inquiry resolved, but their own pitch isn't mutated. (Their dashboard will show the inquiry has closed.)

There's no chat surface attached to acceptance — Trade Hub deliberately hands off to existing tools at this point. Coordinate the actual work via Messenger or the contact methods on the author's business profile.

Etiquette

• Don't carpet-bomb. One careful response per relevant inquiry beats ten generic ones. The board is small enough that authors notice.
• Don't quote then disappear. If you quote, be ready to deliver. Withdrawing is fine; ghosting is bad reputation.
• Match the language. Reply in the same language the inquiry was posted in when you can. English is fine if the inquiry was in English; switching to Russian on an English inquiry signals lazy reading.
• No private contact details in the message. Your business profile is one click away — that's where your phone, email and Messenger handle should live.