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In the News "Used Goods Hawked With New Technology" By Richard Karpinski Web marketplaces may be running out of "new" industries to tackle, but there's always "used" markets to automate. This fall has seen the launch of a slew of Internet middlemen focused on automating the sale or auction of used industrial equipment and surplus goods. The sites are not only used by equipment liquidators and dealers, but also by companies and manufacturers that want to buy and sell goods themselves. Sites like iMark.com, TradeOut.com, SurplusBin.com, and DoveBid.com, the new online site from real-world business-to-business auction house DoveBid, are bringing the efficiencies of the Internet to so-called secondary markets. "If electronic commerce is all about reducing transaction costs, then the auctioning of surplus equipment is probably one of the most inefficient processes in corporate America," said AMR Research analyst Bob Parker. iMark.com has helped companies such as Ralston Purina and Campbell's Soup cut time and cost out of the process of finding buyers for its used industrial equipment. Registration at the site is free, and buyers pay 5 percent on a completed purchase. "The buy side of this [used industrial equipment] market has some pretty large problems," said Brian Magierski, iMark.com's CEO and co-founder. Buyers often need to purchase a used piece of equipment in a very tight time frame, but searching in the offline world for the right match can take some time. Using iMarket's Bid/Ask online application, buyers also have the tools to strike a good deal, Magierski said. iMark.com is not alone in tapping the broad secondary market. TradeOut.com is taking an even broader approach with its marketplace for moving not only used equipment, but excess inventory, as well. The site features more than 100 product categories, including furniture and fixtures; commercial equipment; consumer merchandise; office/computer equipment; tools and hardware; and excess transportation, telecom, or manufacturing capacity. TradeOut.com charges a $5 listing fee and a 5 percent commission to sellers. DoveBid, which already has auctioned billions of dollars in used and surplus goods in real-world auctions, launched its online counterpart Nov. 1. The site features thousands of assets in 20 categories, from manufacturing to textiles to telecom. It also offers online access to DoveBid's existing database of more than 100,000 frequent buyers of used assets. DoveBid's reputation, experience, and ability to span real and virtual auctions gives it a leg up, according to its CEO Ross Dove. Also recently, NetVendor, which builds e-commerce and supply chain apps for the electronics, industrial products, and automotive sectors, launched a website to help those industries sell excess inventory. SurplusBin.com is an umbrella site that includes industry-specific sites, such as ElectronicsBin.com, AutopartsBin.com, and PlasticsBin.com |