But they say Web marketplaces will come to their industries no matter what. They hope lower prices for goods sold through marketplaces will be offset by cost savings from automated order-taking and fulfillment. And by building exchanges themselves, they have control over their offered features and services. For instance, few supplier-run sites will offer reverse auctions, where suppliers bid down the price of a consignment to get business. Suppliers also can build marketplace features that help them cut costs.
Idle capacity is a big issue for specialty-metal producers.
MetalSpectrum will let suppliers post information on products based on production schedules. If a supplier knows it will have idle capacity in a month, it can post that information and have buyers book the capacity in advance. To do that now, you'd have to make thousands of phone calls to potential customers. Privacy Policy Stock data provided by Stockpoint and its data suppliers.