E-commerce boom woos resellers

Internet - As e-trading starts to hot up, opportunity knocks for dealers that want to cash in.

The e-commerce opportunities for resellers are rapidly swelling andalers that want to cash in. diversifying with the launch of an IT market site by start-up company Ace-quote.com, and e-commerce community design software from Infobank.

Ace-quote is an independent Web market that will cater for corporate and public sectors, as well as the consumer market. It aims to attract resellers with the promise of up to 200 buyers per day seeking IT quotes.

Gary Munz, managing director of Ace-quote.com and owner of Cardiff component distributor, KMS, is launching the UK site on 5 July and in Europe by next year.

Helga St Blaize, communications director at Ace-quote.com, revealed that the site would be subscription based because it will not carry advertising or sponsorship. Resellers have to pay £695 per year to trade with buyers, and distributors will pay £995 for their dealings with resellers.

St Blaize added that about £4 million of business had been done in one month during a trial that included 1500 dealers and 4000 buyers. 'It has a lot of advantages for resellers,' she said. 'It's putting them in contact with a huge amount of potential clients.'

Ace-quote is the latest in a rash of e-commerce trading sites to spring up, as companies increasingly automate their supply chains in the style of BT's Marketsite. Infobank launched E-hub on 22 June. It aims to provide organisations with the tools to set up their own e-trading communities.

The aim of the product is to allow firms to fully automate procurement processes by bringing supplier catalogues into organisations' e-trading market. The first to launch a system based on E-hub will be ICL.

Graham Sadd, chief executive of Infobank, said: 'Firms considering e-commerce are no longer asking why. They are asking when. Resellers will have to change and face the e-commerce demands of clients or they'll find themselves outdated. They must deal with diverse demands - from software to televisions and mobile phones,' he said.

Munz concluded: 'Ace will open up the market and challenge the likes of Dixons and Tiny as well as the corporate and public sector.'