surplus
The traditional
intermediaries
Electronic
intermediaries
.Classification
.Description of
the
site
.Benefits
.Critical mass
We can divided surplus web sites into three large categories by using a hub classification.Some business-to-business marketplaces focus on goods within a single industry, such as textile or electronic equipment. These are referred to as vertical marketplaces or vertical hubs. On the other side of the spectrum are horizontal marketplaces. They serve companies across multiple industries and often focus on an area that is common to all of those industries such as surplus assets. We are going to see a third type of market place which is a company operated site. Like consumer marketplaces, business to business marketplaces serve an intermediary role that is essential for truly efficient e-commerce.
Vertical hubs
Sellers doing business on the site tend to be manufacturers or distributors within that industry; while the buyers are distributors or end users of the products.We can see two types of vertical hub. The first one are specialized in surplus and the second are a vertical hub which provides different services including buying and selling surplus.
In the first category, we can find
- USBid.com for the electronic equipment industry
- Purchasing center.com for the MRO industry
- Aceonsource.com for some special components of the electronic industry
- Bizsurplus.com for the industrial equipments
In the second category, we can find:
- industrymart.com for the bearing and power transmission industry
- All the vertical communities of verticalnet.com.
VerticalNet offers 53 "vertical communities," such as power, paper, medical design, food ingredients, paint, and coatings. Recently, the company started to introduce auction facilities where companies can sell and buy surplus like that at Labx.com to many of its sites.
Because of the specialized nature of the site buyers who visit the
site are likely to have an interest in your surplus assets. This is a truly
advantage if the surplus is a technical goods and can be used only within
this industry. On the other hand, if a firm wants to sell a product which
can be interesting for all industries, on a vertical hub there is a risk
to miss out a number of potential buyers.
Horizontal hubs
Horizontal hubs enable companies to buy and sell virtually anything, from commodities to factory equipment to finished goods inventory. Sellers can be manufacturers, service firms, distributors and dealers across all different industries. Buyers can include other manufacturers, liquidators, distributors, dealers and exporters.
The horizontal web sites are not always in a direct competition, a large number of them offer a special service:
- Trade out.com and Hotbiznet.com are only a link between buyers and
sellers
- Zonetrader.com will take physical possession of the equipment and
it is put through rigourous testing and reconditioning, custom configuration
and stamped with a 30 days guarantee.
- Salvagesale.com is specialized in domaged goods.
- Comauction is the only open auction service with a fully integrated
money management process via Merrill Lynch.
- iMark.com is specialized into new used asset markets.
Horizontal hubs are the perfect place to sell non-technical goods because they draw the largest pool of potential buyers.
Company-operated sites
These sites are operated by manufacturers or distributors trying to sell their own surplus. They only include a single seller and very often they don't provide a wide range of items and services.
- Usgovernmentsurplus.com
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| The Company was formed in October 1998 and is headquartered in Ardsley,
New York.
TradeOut.com brings together thousands of companies to buy and sell surplus assets in over 100 product categories, using flexible, online transaction capabilities. TradeOut.com is an independent exchange, and therefore does not purchase or take possession of assets, collect payments, fulfill purchase orders or represent any buyers or sellers. TradeOut.com, a privately held company based in Ardsley, New York, is the creator of the leading online marketplace for excess inventory and idle assets. Initial funding was provided by key executives, individual investors, and private equity investors Channel Partners, Catterton-Simon Partners, Jacobson Family Investments and iCentennial Ventures LLC. Additional private equity funding was provided by: ·- Benchmark Capital ·- eBay ·- Morgan Stanley Dean Witter |
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| Unlike other auction sites, ZoneTrader.com does more than just connect
sellers and buyers. For sellers - Fortune 500 companies and manufacturers
- ZoneTrader.com offers AssetLink™, a unique service that consists of corporate
asset recovery. This means ZoneTrader.com will take physical possession
of, audits, and tracks any and all excess company assets. The equipment
is put through rigorous testing and reconditioning, custom-configuration,
and stamped with a "ZoneTrader Approved" 30-day guarantee. Customers buy
directly from ZoneTrader.com. instead of simply buying through the site
- an unprecedented value in the online auction industry. Products available
on the site are surplus assets from Fortune 500 companies and suppliers.
The Foundation
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| SalvageSale.com was founded through a succession of a 30 year old family
business.
Salvagesale.com understood that the future involves linking their customers centrally on the Internet. This will provide a vehicle for our sellers to expose their goods to tens of thousands of buyers, and an opportunity for our buyers to view all of the salvage we have available, sorted by many different categories. Today, Salvagesale.com has well over 10,000 buyers available to purchase surplus or damaged inventories as well as local representatives throughout most of the US. They have extended their service into Mexico and South America, which gives them a comprehensive export market for sensitive products |
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| ComAuction is especially suited for liquidating over-runs, obsolete
equipment, surplus equipment and asset recovery. However, any commercial
item can be bought or sold through the site.
ComAuction is the only open auction service with a fully integrated money management process via Merrill Lynch. This patent pending technology allows an unmatched degree of safety and security businesses need in order to feel comfortable utilizing the Internet as an every day means of procurement. While many auction services offer a third party for escrow services, adding significant cost to transaction fees for the seller, ComAuction has its escrow-like service completely integrated into the site, thus keeping the transaction fee to a low 5%, with no listing fees. ComAuction is seeking a partnership with a strong Internet company that wishes to take advantage of the rapidly evolving B2B marketplace and get involved in a market that could be as much as eight times the size of auction giant, eBay. |
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| HotBizNet.com offers a Business-to-Business Auction Services for the
sales of surplus, overstock, commercial inventories and production equipment.
Our Clients are manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers, jobbers,
and retailers, who purchase or sell commercial inventories for resale.
Surplus or overstock inventories may be raw materials used in a manufacturing
process, finished goods, trade ins or reconditioned products, and production
equipment.
HotBizNet.com, located in historic Wilmington, NC, evolved out of American Business Network, which primarily serves businesses across the nation by providing the most comprehensive Government bid search in the country. After realizing the need for clients having overstock and surplus inventory, American Business Network began "birthing" HotBizNet so you would have a quality market to buy and sell. |
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| The United States Government warehouses billions of dollars in surplus
products. The inventory consist of baby diapers to food items to exotic
automobiles and aircraft.
ASL is continually seeking investors capable of handling large quantities of surplus inventory. |
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| iMark.com marketplace is designed to assit dealers in growing sales in existing markets and expanding into new used asset markets. iMark.com provides free listing, a low 5% seller's fee, access ot a database with thousands of qualified potential buyers, serious leads for wanted pieces of used equipment. |
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| USBid is pioneering online business-to-business trading by developing
a Web-based community in which buyers and sellers are brought together
in an auction format. The primary focus of USBid is using the bidding process
for the disposition of excess inventory for Fortune 500 OEMs and distributors,
with the initial vertical marketing being the Electronics industry.
USBid Inc. is the first company to offer a truly comprehensive solution for managing excess inventories. USBid combines enterprise computing and e-commerce knowledge with electronics industry expertise to deliver tremendous benefit to both manufacturing and distribution companies. |
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| Logis Co. has been an Internet provider of Information and Services
to the Bearing and Power Transmission distributor industry since early
1996.Logis is a member of the PTDA and supports the efforts of Industry
Associations in improving the value of distribution channels around the
world.
The mission is to provide unique and highly productive tools and services at effective costs, allowing the distribution channel to market and manage excess, or unproductive inventory assets. Distributors can check the offers listing of other distributors and manufacturers excess bearing and power transmission inventory. |
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| PurchasingCenter.com is a FREE online business-to-business service
designed to reduce the time, cost, and hassle of purchasing maintenance,
repair, and operating (MRO) market.
B-to-B e-commerce tools including: - A sourcing tool that allows you to locate distributors by manufacturer, brand, or category - An online RFQ tool that you can use to send RFQs electronically to suppliers - Excess inventory auctions that can be used for both buying needs items at reduced prices and/or as part of your own resource recovery program - A "Your Purchasing Page" feature that provides a self-guided Web page creation wizard that allows members to publish information for use by their suppliers and requisitioners. |
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| The site list excess, non-turning and overstock inventory of Consumer
Electronics.
The service is simple, it helps their clients become more profitable through lowering their inventory commitment. The two main services are: - the corporate inventory ads. Thousands of items advertised in spreadsheet format. - the corporate lot auction. Companies wanting to purge large volumes of inventory in one transaction can submit their inventory to our auction. |
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Sellers Benefits
- Provides a very easy and fast way to sell the surplus
- expands universe of buyers generating more competition and higher
selling prices.
- Minimizes transaction costs by reducing labor and communication costs
- Provides seller customization features including different sale formats,
selling periods, and seller-defined buyer groups
Buyers benefits
- attracts a larger group of sellers giving buyers access to more inventory
and assets.
- Allow 24 hour, 7day a week access to products
- Provides easy side by side price comparison of similar products from
different sellers
- Minimizes time and cost of finding needed product.
These web sites need to attract much traffic as they can from both sides
Buyers and Sellers in order to:
- create competition among buyers and generate a good price for the
sellers
- propose a large range of items to attract a maximum of buyers.
The difficulty for the sites is that these two conditions work together
and you cannot have one without the other.
As we saw above, we can count more than eleven different web sites plus
the web sites from verticalnet.com. The question is to know if the market
is big enough for all these players. Actually, it is certainly too early
to say if all these sites are viable but maybe in the future some mergers
will happen.
