Accenture Aiding Firms’ EBay Sales
Technology consultant Accenture Ltd. hopes to profit from the explosive growth of online shopping by helping big manufacturers such as Sony Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. offload excess inventory on Internet auction site EBay.
The site, which is better known as a place where people auction off unwanted items sitting in their garage, now is selling high volumes of companies’ spare products -- everything from airplane parts to faucets.
Accenture has signed up 60 customers in the last year, including such names as Texas Instruments Inc. and Fujitsu Ltd.
The demand is huge: U.S. businesses process about $60 billion a year in excess inventory, according to Accenture. The company, formerly Anderson Consulting, charges on average 10% of transaction fees.
“Some significant portion of the $60 billion could find its way to EBay,” said Robin Abrams, president of Connection to EBay, a unit of Accenture. “EBay has been able to attract a pretty compelling number of merchants of all sizes to fulfill that voracious appetite of 85 million registered users.”
Accenture’s business took off quickly thanks to its connections to Fortune 500 companies, rolling right over smaller rivals such as ChannelAdvisor Corp. and Auctionworks Inc.
Its success already has attracted new competitors. Europe’s largest software shop, SAP, said in June that it would urge customers to sell close-out items on EBay with its help.
The EBay business is tiny compared with Accenture’s overall annual sales of $10 billion, but it is growing quickly.
“This is going to be an important area in the future,” said Richard Davis, an analyst at Needham & Co.
Offloading excess inventory on EBay is more complicated than selling the odd trinket. That’s why technology giant HP needs Accenture’s help to sell refurbished computers, printers, hand-helds and low-end servers on the auction site.
“It is very different selling a hundred items from just one,” said John Jones, an analyst at SoundView Technology, adding that companies have been outsourcing more than ever before.
The EBay service has helped Accenture nearly double sales of what it categorizes as business process operations in the last fiscal year.
Abrams said it was “not unusual” for merchants to get returns 22% higher than they would from liquidators.
Textile company Sure Fit Inc. has sold more than $1 million in furniture slipcovers on EBay since spring. With Accenture’s pricing strategy, Sure Fit managed to command prices that overall exceed its traditional liquidation channels.
“Working with Connection to EBay enabled us to rapidly launch our new EBay channel, tap into a large new buyer base, scale quickly and achieve maximum returns,” Sure Fit’s director of sales, David Spain, said in a release.
Some companies also want to acquire new customers by selling on EBay. Fujitsu Computer Products of America Inc. said sales of its refurbished scanners on EBay had increased sevenfold since March, and 90% of the businesses buying are new customers.
