A Capital Idea

Even with the dot-com shakeout, a Los Angeles start-up is trying to build an industrial-strength online marketplace. In fact, bad economic conditions may actually help it make money.

The Dock (www.thedock.com), which opened last December, anticipates getting a piece of the $400 million used-equipment market that is expected to grow as a result of bankruptcies in the industrial sector.

The Dock offers buyers and sellers of industrial capital gear a selection of equipment and value-added services like appraising, financing and classified advertising in an open, collaborative marketplace, says the firm’s chief strategic officer Peter Griffiths.

So far, about 4,130 corporations, equipment dealers and auctioneers have joined the site as members, including Ralston Purina, Aaron Equipment Co., Federal Equipment Co., Machinery & Equipment Inc., Daewoo Heavy Industries America, Louisiana Equipment Co., Brandenberg Industrial Service Co. and Prestige Equipment Co.

Visitors to the site can purchase, bid on and list assets or services under their company’s own names and brands. Griffiths notes that The Dock makes money by charging subscription fees ranging from about $2,000 to tens of thousands of dollars depending on a company’s size and reach.

To promote the site, The Dock is capturing names from trade show attendees and getting a number of leads from the venture capital units of Lehman Bros., which is backing it.

Earlier this year, The Dock did some outbound telemarketing but has since eased off and is still evaluating its leads, says Griffiths. It is planning some e-mail efforts and possibly some direct mailings, though Griffiths cites the expense of direct mail as a negative.

This year, Griffiths expects to pull in only a few million dollars in revenue but hopes eventually to land as much as $20 million. Likewise, he hopes to get as many as 20,000 companies using the site in the next few years. “If we have that many,” he says, “then we’ll consider ourselves a significant player in this industry.”

Above all, Griffiths isn’t worrying too much about operating in cyberspace. “I think there was too much euphoria with the Internet and now there’s too much pessimism with it,” he says. “I still think it’s a very viable form of marketing.”

Abacus Cuts Staff, Will Reorganize Abacus Direct, a division of Internet advertiser DoubleClick Inc., has laid off some 20 employees as part of a strategic restructuring, sources said. DoubleClick had announced in October that it was disappointed with the performance of the Abacus Direct data unit. It has since changed the subsidiary’s leadership at the top and is rebuilding it from within. Lorri Molinari, a spokeswoman for Abacus Direct, Broomfield, CO, declined to confirm or deny the layoffs. “Our clients are no longer aligned to one particular marketing channel,” she explained. “It was necessary to restructure the company so that we have the best talent on each account team as our clients become multichannel marketers.” DoubleClick CEO Kevin Ryan said in the Oct. 12 statement that DoubleClick had high expectations to expand the Abacus Direct business into new markets such as financial services, business-to-business and retail, but that those markets had failed to perform as well as it had hoped.