Eventually, in yet another round of disintermediation, exchanges may cut out many traders and liquidators. The benefits will mean increased pressure on sellers, too. We can easily have suppliers from Taiwan and India competing with U.S. suppliers.
Entrepreneurs smell opportunities in the air, and the online bidding market is flush with activity.
OpenSite Technologies Inc. this week will move up from supporting relatively small auctions to the enterprise market with a product called AuctionNow. The company is also introducing a dynamic pricing toolkit for companies that want to add flexible prices to existing online stores. For its part, Free Markets Inc., which operates customized auctions for companies buying industrial materials and also runs a coal auction site called CoalHub, is planning an initial stock offering. Deere, for example, recently conducted its first online auction for used farm equipment on behalf of its 650 dealers around the country. Deere, which is hosting the auction on its servers, wants to offer new markets to dealers whose products might not be in demand in their geographic area.