Bellevue's Auction Action
Bidcrawler.com, located just off the I-90 corridor, launched earlier this month a strategic partnership with Go2net to provide its scrubbing technology for users to search the top 22 auction sites in real-time. Bidcrawler is featured on the front page of Go2net's MetaCrawler.
Bidcrawler.com's CEO Greg Stone is very proud of the relationship with the local company. "There are a lot of great companies right here in the Seattle area. We actually enjoy these partnerships and the ability to conduct face-to-face discussions on a routine basis," says Stone.
According to Stone, bidcrawler.com does not compete with auction sites, it is merely a power tool to make content aggregation and comparative purchasing a simple and intuitive process. "Aggregating data that's are specialty," says the CEO who holds a Masters in divinity and until this very day continues to work with street kids through the Street Youth Ministry.
While there are other auction aggregators in the market such as auctionrover.com and and auctionwatch.com, Stone believes that his company's advantage is their clean uncluttered presentation."When people come to our site they are able to immediately do what they came there for: to search," says Stone.
In addition to the growing online consumer auction market, the B2B auction market and e-commerce marketplaces represent even greater potential to the young startup. Bidcrawler.com will be entering the B2B auction scene as early as this Summer. The technology will be called B2Bidcrawler. It will scrub B2B auctions and exchanges.
Bidcrawler.com also has its eyes on the international market. According to Stone, the company will be the first U.S. aggregator to enter the international space in the auction aggregator market.
According to an IXL report from 1999, Forrester Research identified six countries where internet commerce will experience exceptional growth. Four are European: Britain, Germany, France and Italy. In fact, bidcrawler.com plans to enter Europe first with localized sites.
In addition to the B2B and International operations, the company is also gearing up for wireless functionality. According to Stone, he believes in less talk and more action. "It's the market that drives the speed of bidcrawler.com," says the CEO.
B2B is on the minds of other Bellevue Companies. Bidpath.com has set up a complete infrastructure to provide traditional auctioneers the opportunity to tap into the online market.
"There's a big chasm between the old economy of auctioneers and the new economy of auction sites," explains Ajay Murthy, Vice President of Business Development. "We want to bridge the two."
Murthy explains that the complicated process of inventory, collection, and distribution that B2B auctioneers need to follow has been tremendously underserved by IT.
The solution BidPath.com offers involves an end-to-end solution that starts with inventory technology.
"An auction will generally have between 800 and 1000 lots," says Murthy. "Traditionally one would need to take a photo, then write a description, then take it back, and put it in a catalog."
Bidpath.com, along with an undisclosed digital camera manufacturer, has created a camera with an XML-driven UI, to allow for categorization and digital recording directly from the unit.
This information can then be directly uplinked to BidPath's servers, where it will be matched with the appropriate partner auction site on the net. Although unwilling to share any of the partners at this time, Murthy says he has partnered with a number of the top sites in the industry.
"The liquidity is in the auction sites," says Murthy, "we want buyers to be able to get to our customers listings through the best auction sites."
Auctioneers seem pleased with the initial trial of the product. "The great thing is not just the software, but the marketing in terms of making assets we have accessible on a lot of different sites," says George Cunningham, VP of Cunningham and Associates.
Although Cunningham has come across a few minor bugs, he notes that the company's engineers have been very accessible and have fixed any problems immediately.
Request4bid.com, also located in Bellevue, is redefining the way corporations, VARs and manufacturers buy, distribute and sell I.T. hardware.
According to the company's President and CEO Douglas Beighle, the important process of procuring I.T. hardware is often cumbersome - the same information is communicated to different vendors and all incoming quotes need to be consolidated.
The company utilizes a reverse auction format to streamline the procurement process, saving both time and money. The company announced just the other day, that buyers can now use its system to manage vendors through its private auction feature that allows buyers to post their specific I.T. hardware requirements so vendors can compete for their business by submitting bids.
Its private auction feature streamlines communication and reduces administrative overhead for buyers by providing real-time system emails to update vendors as to the status of the bid. Request4bid.com provides a central location for all auction information and updates. It alerts vendors when they have been outbid and when an auction is completed.
It also notifies winning vendors via email and prompts them to begin transaction with buyer. It notifies outbid vendors via email, thanking them for their participation and informing them that another vendor was awarded the order.
"The streamlined process improves market efficiency and stimulates competition," says Beighle.
