THE LATEST COMPANY TO offer or auction office products and furniture electronically to the small office market decided to try it first in its own backyard in Ohio.
Of course the small start-up, BusinessHere.com, like most others today, does have visions of expansion beyond its home base-and has even received inquiries from as far away as Lithuania and Australia to fuel its fire.
The BusinessHere.com auction site offers new, used, refurbished and surplus items. The retail areas of the Web site boast computers, software, office furniture, business and industrial equipment, business services and electronics.
Since the site went live a couple of months ago, it’s been lining up major companies like Xerox, Sprint, Gateway, United Stationers and others to supply goods for auction or retail. But the difference, says president Johnathan Skardon, is that BusinessHere.com has been able to deal primarily with nearby regional offices of those large firms without having to go to their top corporate management, where they might run into bureaucratic obstacles.
The company decided to offer products through the auction format-in addition to retail-because of the recent popularity of online auctions, Skardon says. Auction and retail listings are free to companies and BusinessHere.com takes only a 2% to 7% cut of each completed transaction, a little lower than the typical fees taken by affiliate sites.
The company is looking to clear some $4 million in revenue over the next 18 months, primarily from small to medium-sized businesses. At deadline, it had already pulled in more than 1,000 visitors to the site.
To make product selection easier, the company has divided its site into the following domain names: BusinessHere.com, AuctionHere.com, ComputersHere.com, SoftHere.com, EquipmentHere.com, FurnitureHere.com, ServicesHere.com, ElectronicsHere.com, SuppliesHere.com and MiscHere.com.
BusinessHere.com, says Skardon, particularly hopes to get a piece of the computer and software resale market, estimated at about $3 billion.
The firm has a mechanism to link other companies to its site through its www.LinksHere.com domain and is looking for affiliate arrangements.
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