If your firm is planning to purchase equipment in the near future, two things are likely to happen: First, someone will ponder if used equipment can be purchased instead of new; and second, someone else in the office will search the Web for an equipment auction house.
However, although auctions are still available for buying and selling belongings on the Internet, they do have their problems - including some so severe that businesses are folding. In recent months, online sites such as the Dock, eSprockets and others have fallen, and in what seems like record time. The Dock, a Los Angeles-based Web site for used industrial equipment, only lasted about five months.
Watching the businesses eat its young, however, has spurred other e-business portals to become more sophisticated - moving away from the simple auction format and into services that may be just as important as the equipment you want to buy.
"We offer direct sales as an online distributor; we have the same functionality as a brick-and-mortar," says Nick Bard, CEO of emachinetool.com, which does not feature auctions but offers automatic discounts of about 10 percent on everything it sells. "We provide everything - the machine, the specs, the features, the price.
"Most bricks-and-mortars are in adversarial positions to the end-user," he says. "The customer wants the lowest price and the seller wants to get the highest price. It's a strained scenario."
Emachinetool.com also offers installation help and warranties, allows customers to lease or buy and takes credit cards, Bard notes. The site is the amazon.com of the industrial world, not the eBay, he says.
"They're [other web sites] being weeded out to a large extent," Bard says. "Their (business) models are not effective models."
The problem is a lack of value - either perceived or real - to the end-user, Bard says.
Many of the sites are "run by people not from the industry," he says, "and the information provided on the site is ineffective." Often there are no photos of the equipment, and write-ups on the specs, applications and other essentials are scanty.
"Then it says 'Bid now', and you're not going to do that," Bard says.
So when shopping for your next piece of equipment on the Internet, start by choosing the right Web site. Look for the extra services that each offers - because in the real world, buying equipment takes more than just a good price. Take your time and look for a complete solution - not just a list of products for sale.
"They (other Web sites) think it's like selling a barrel of oil, and it's not," Bard says.
