North American Paper Manufacturer Automates Sales Process and Increases Buyer Base for Excess Product

The Challenge:

A large North American paper manufacturer was selling its excess product to a handful of buyers via a slow, manual process: spreadsheet offerings were being sent out to the buyers and the company’s customer service team would track offers for each lot. Another challenge for selling paper to the commodities and recycling market was starting auctions at a significant “price per ton” opening bid, which appeared intimidating to some buyers. Needing a more modern approach, the manufacturer partnered with B-Stock with the following goals:

• Automate the sales process
• Increase the amount of interested buyers
• Increase demand and pricing for the product

The Solution:

To address these goals, B-Stock launched a business-to-business marketplace for the manufacturer, enabling approved buyers from around the globe to bid directly on railcar-size lots of excess product via competitive online auctions. By making the inventory available to secondary market paper buyers through its online marketplace, the manufacturer was able to drop the use of spreadsheet offerings and immediately automate the sales process.

The Results:

Since launching its B2B marketplace for excess product, the paper manufacturer expanded their geographic reach and size of its buyer base by 2300%. Ongoing buyer education and nurturing has lead to a consistent repeat buyer rate across all categories.

By eliminating the manual tasks associated with selling excess inventory and giving buyers an easy, transparent way to access and bid on inventory, the manufacturer has been able to streamline its process, saving valuable time while beating recovery expectations.

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