Datrontech invites online bids

Datrontech Group has established an online auctioning service to sell its memory products over the internet, in order to retain elusive margins on commodity products.

The system, called Margin Maker, has been devised to sell older technologies that are no longer freely available on the open market plus other, scarce memory products. Customers can obtain an up-to-date price list without having to contact the company's sales personnel first. They simply access Datrontech's Website, enter their password and account number and the bidding can commence.

According to Andrew MacKenzie, director of Datrontech's memory business, the auction is set by tracking the global market price daily. Bidding starts from a price set by Datrontech somewhere above the market price.

The distributor said it had no immediate plans to auction products other than memory.

'We are getting up to 35 bids a day at the moment, but they have only translated to three or four sales a day so far,' said MacKenzie. 'We are looking to do 20 to 55 a day within the next couple of months,' he added, remarking that all the sales so far have been volume sales.

The distributor said it was pleased with the level of interest shown so far but was unable to judge what future demand would be like. It is collating names and addresses of all online buyers to date and intends to conduct market research to determine reasons for their interest.

Sukh Rayat, general manager at rival memory distributor Flashpoint, said memory lends itself easily to the online trading model. 'Memory seems to be going that way. In fact, we are doing something similar ourselves, where we post the market prices of the day across all our ranges,' he said.