Any entrepreneur will tell you that pushing a new product or service out to the public is a challenge. Turning an idea into something tangible can take months or even years. Trying to modernize an industry is heavy lifting.
But what makes a firm a successful, long-lasting company? At TuffWerx, we argue that company stability and long-term focus come from identifying and internalizing core beliefs. We continue to fine-tune ours, but we’re ready to share them with you in hopes that you’ll be inspired to create or revisit your own.
1. We Believe Online Equipment Listings Should Be Free
There are many listing websites out there, and most of them charge just to list your equipment for sale. At TuffWerx, we believe that heavy equipment listings are a commodity. But listings themselves are not what provide you value as a seller. Instead, the value lies in our ability to send you buyers.
This core belief fuels the way we run our business. We aren’t focused on having the most equipment listings. Rather, we’re driven by a desire to get you sales. In other words, TuffWerx is not a listing platform. We’re a selling platform.
As a seller, you don’t have to gamble when you list equipment on TuffWerx. You don’t have to justify paying listing fees. List your equipment for free, and we’ll be compensated at the end of the day when we find you the buyer you’ve been looking for.
2. We Believe Current Methods for Buying and Selling Equipment Are Primitive, Time-Consuming and Expensive
Where buying and selling is concerned, the heavy equipment industry has been slow to evolve and many players haven’t progressed in 50 years. Richie Bros. was banging the gavel at live auction in the late 60’s, and they still are today. Machinery Trader was printing classified ad magazines 50 years ago, and they still are today. They are the market leaders of their part of the industry, and have been for decades.
The use of computers and the Internet should make it faster and easier to buy and sell equipment. We’ve seen it happen in the auto industry and countless other industries, but methods in our industry remain primitive.
Current methods are also expensive. Richie Bros. takes a double-digit percentage of your sales through their auctions. At least 10% of the price your equipment sells for at auction, not including other fees like cleaning and painting.
With classified ads, your primitive listings with one photo and a few lines of jargon-filled text can cost you thousands of dollars, when multiplied across all of your assets for sale and renewals when your equipment doesn’t sell right away.
And current methods are time-consuming. If you choose to sell at auction, the date could be three months away. Meanwhile, your equipment sits idle in the sun, rain or snow.
If you’re selling through classified ads instead, you’re stuck with a completely do-it-yourself “solution.” You have to take all of the phone calls, find out if the buyer is serious, and weed through the fraudsters and the “just looking” time wasters.
If you make a sale, it’s time for new headaches as you arrange your own shipping and worry over wire transfers.
3. We Believe the Internet Is the Key to Democratizing Equipment Sales
The Internet is this generation’s Gutenberg printing press. It’s not an evolutionary step, it’s a quantum leap. It changes everything. It allows the widespread sharing of information, and if more information is better, much more information is much better. But the Internet by itself isn’t enough. Something or someone has to be able to leverage the Internet’s power, and that’s what TuffWerx is doing now, more than any other player in the industry.
We want to arm buyers and sellers with the information needed to make decisions. We do this by creating a community where both parties can improve their connection and share data.
Here are some examples of the information we allow to be freely exchanged through our website and heavy equipment listings:
- Unlimited photo uploads
- Unlimited space for equipment descriptions
- Pricing guidance through the TuffWerx pricing guide
TuffWerx makes it easy for you to revise your equipment listing at any time, so that the latest information is always available to potential buyers. Compare this to print ads. If you make a mistake, you’re often out of luck, and editing ads can be time-consuming and costly.
We believe that more commerce occurs when everyone has information. We are always working to reduce any friction that would hinder the process of buying and selling, by harnessing the power of the Internet and new technology.
4. We Believe the Industry Must Evolve
It’s well past time for the heavy equipment to evolve, and TuffWerx will play a leading role in making that happen. History tells us that existing players in an industry are never the ones who bring innovation. Railroad car manufacturers aren’t the ones making airplanes, and the icebox manufacturers don’t make refrigerators. It’s the new entrants to a market – those with different experiences, skill sets, and vision, the ones without 50 years of this-is-the-way-we-do-it baggage – who bring the major improvements.
Our online system removes hurdles to commerce. No more primitive, expensive or time-consuming methods for buying and selling heavy equipment. You can move from listing to closing a deal in a much shorter amount of time.
And it’s really that simple. Convinced yet? It’s a no-risk opportunity, so get started and create your first free listing now.
Heavy equipment auction photo by Laurie Hulsey via Flickr CC.