Ritchie Bros., the world’s largest seller of used industrial and construction equipment, commercially launched Ritchie Bros. EquipmentOne this week with new features and functionality for both buyers and sellers. Designed to complement the company’s flagship unreserved auction business, Ritchie Bros. EquipmentOne is a safe and secure online marketplace for the private sale of equipment and materials where buyers and sellers can negotiate, complete and settle their transactions in a transparent environment.
Ritchie Bros. said it was inspired to create EquipmentOne from feedback from a wide variety of equipment sellers who said their needs were not being met by Ritchie Bros. unreserved auctions.
“They were telling us that what they need isn’t met by brokers and dealers and auctioneers,” said Bob Armstrong, chief strategic development officer of Ritchie Bros. “They like to trade privately and they have very clear reasons for doing so. But they don’t have any really good solutions for their needs and that’s where we come in.”
Ritchie Bros.’ research showed that private listing sites were not satisfactory to many customers. EquipmentOne is able to provide a level of security and safety lacking in traditional sites. With EquipmentOne, once a transaction price has been agreed on, the buyer places his payment into an escrow account that holds the funds until the buyer receives the item and is satisfied it meets the conditions agreed to.
“Ritchie Bros. EquipmentOne offers sellers control of the selling price and process while providing buyers complete transparency and security,” said Armstrong. “Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers has been helping the world’s builders exchange equipment with our unreserved auctions for more than 50 years — in 2012 we sold $3.9 billion of equipment — it’s a growing and profitable business. Still, our current estimate of the global used equipment market suggests it is in excess of $200 billion in annual transaction value with approximately half of all equipment transactions taking place on a private treaty basis. With Ritchie Bros. EquipmentOne, we are now able to provide these private treaty buyers and sellers a safe, convenient and profitable way to exchange equipment and materials.”
To buy or sell on EquipmentOne, a person or company must join. Membership is free. Members have the options to create personal equipment watchlists, save searches and have access to the Ritchie Bros. Orange Book, a reference tool that shows recent pricing for equipment of a similar type, age and usage. By highlighting a market activity zone of prices where buyers and sellers are most active, the Orange Book is designed to help sellers determine a reasonable asking price and help buyers determine reasonable prices to offer.
An intuitive self-serve listing tool is available that enables sellers to create high-quality listings easily. An online negotiation engine enables buyers and sellers to have the equivalent of an offline negotiation.
“We tried to create an experience that’s more like buying or selling a house,” Armstrong said. “We realized that people in some cases want to set asking prices, people may want to make offers below asking price, or above asking price.”
Sellers create their own listings, including equipment photos and detailed information and select an Ask Price and a Buy-it-Now price for a listing period of two weeks, during which time negotiations may take place while buyers make transparent offers. The item is sold if an offer is made at the “buy-it-now” price or if at the end of the listing period, an offer is made in excess of the Ask Price. Otherwise, the seller has four options: Accept the highest offer and sell the item; move the item to a Ritchie Bros. auction; remove the item from the marketplace; or re-list the item on EquipmentOne after a two-week waiting period.
“The big appeal for Ritchie Bros. EquipmentOne is the convenience and security it provides both buyers and sellers,” said Dave Dawson, CEO of Ritchie Bros. EquipmentOne. “We take care of all the advertizing, collecting proceeds and more. Our Online Negotiation provides complete transparency into the negotiation process, the Ritchie Bros. Orange Book provides valuable market information to make buyers and sellers more informed on equipment pricing, and EquipmentOne Total Buyer Protection ensures buyers are protected through an escrow process, seller experience ratings and facilitate dispute resolution. We also provide the most equipment listings anywhere on the Web by pulling in equipment being sold in our unreserved auctions as well as equipment listed on other websites all across the Internet. Currently we are showing more than 2.8 million listings.”
For more information, visit EquipmentOne.com.
