After more than 30 years in the business of auctioning off industrial equipment in the United States, William Marshall thought he’d try to take his show global. It’s a plausible idea in light of the popularity of online auctions and the fact that so much of the world’s manufacturing has gone international.
Earlier this year, Marshall helped found Leasend.com. The Wilmington, MA company offers online auctions of industrial equipment that’s been returned from leases and is available for resale.
Since July the firm has received some 10,700 online inquiries, says Marshall, who’s reluctant to project revenue.
Outfits placing equipment with Leasend.com (as in “lease” and “end”) include Eastern Bank, Mellon Bank, United Bank of Kuwait and Capital Leasing. Several hundred bidders have begun using the system.
Leasend.com takes a 10% commission on all transactions, whose monetary value can run from $1,000 to $100,000 and above, according to Marshall.
To help build foreign business, Leasend.com offers a 120-day auction cycle. That gives potential overseas bidders the opportunity to come here and inspect the equipment they might want to bid on.
The company has a database of more than 200,000 items. Included are injection molding machines for plastics manufacturing, high-tech equipment for industries like printed circuit board assembly, aerospace and telecommunications, and machine tools.
To promote the service, Leasend.com has been sending out lead-generation mailings to executives in these targeted industries. Marshall is vague about the sources for his lists but concedes that the company is staying away from files compiled on the basis of standard industrial classification (SIC) codes because they overlap too much.
The company is also running a number of ads in trade magazines and is listed on Yahoo! and other Internet search engines.
Marshall estimates the resale market for industrial equipment probably runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
“It’s our goal to extend this type of auction to every piece of manufacturing or industrial equipment that comes off lease,” he says.
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