Ritchie Bros, one of the largest sellers of used industrial equipment, has now commercially launched Ritchie Bros EquipmentOne with new features and functionality for both buyers and sellers.
Complementary to the company's flagship unreserved auction business, Ritchie Bros EquipmentOne (www.EquipmentOne.com) 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 all in one safe and transparent environment.
"Ritchie Bros EquipmentOne offers sellers control of the selling price and process while providing buyers complete transparency and security—it's unlike any other marketplace in the industry," said Bob Armstrong, chief strategic development officer of Ritchie Bros, during an April 8 press conference. "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."
Qualified members from anywhere in the world are able to buy on EquipmentOne. Membership is free. Members can create personal equipment watchlists, save searches and have access to the Ritchie Bros Orange Book, a market reference tool that shows recent pricing for equipment of 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.
The EquipmentOne marketplace has an intuitive self-serve listing tool that is currently available to equipment sellers in the United States. Self-serve listing functionality for Canadians is expected to launch later this year, with further international expansion in 2014.
"The big appeal for Ritchie Bros EquipmentOne is the convenience and security it provides both buyers and sellers," said Dave Dawson, chief executive officer of Ritchie Bros EquipmentOne. "We take care of all the advertising, collecting proceeds and more—Ritchie Bros EquipmentOne provides a number of features and services to ensure all transactions are easy, safe and secure. Our Online Negotiation Engine 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 facilitated 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."
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. Negotiations take place using the Online Negotiation Engine. Buyers make transparent offers above or below the Ask Price. 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: (a) accept the highest offer and sell them item, (b) move the item to a Ritchie Bros unreserved auction, (c) remove the item from the marketplace or (d) re-list the item on EquipmentOne after a two-week waiting period.