Business opportunities are everywhere. Some are better at finding them
When I found out about www.municibid.com a couple of days ago, I didn’t realize that actually buying stuff from Uncle Sam might be a good thing for small businesses. After talking with my friend Jen, I realized I was actually missing two important things: municibid is a great example of finding a niche need and turning it into a business and second, small businesses can cut costs by purchasing from the government.
It never crossed my mind the US government didn’t have an efficient way to sell surplus and forfeited / seized goods and that you could actually find a way to start a business just from knowing this, but Greg Berry, municibid’s founder did.
In 2005, while serving in his first year as a town counselor in Pennsylvania, Greg felt the pain, first hand, of selling no longer needed items for far less than the market value using the sealed bid process… It was clear there were two issues… 1. No one knew the items were for sale and 2. The bidding was not truly competitive. He knew there was a better way! So in 2007 municid.com was born.
But how does it help small businesses?
I believe that the crisis made purchasing from the government a viable option in 2 ways:
- small businesses need to cut costs but continue to grow; then buying cheaper it’s good news;
- government is trying to sell plenty of inventory to coupe with the budget and personnel reduction.
And here is municibid.com coming into place and helping small business owners have easier and more convenient access to the goods on sale as explained by Greg: “a town wants to sell a no longer needed police car… they list the car on municibid, the listing is immediately pushed out all over the web (Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn (and many more) and item specific sites, such as the First Responders Network). The car is exposed to a much broader, nationwide & global audience. It is convenient to bidders (no travel, can bid when they want, no paperwork, etc) and is a much less intimidating process. It opens the auctions to everyone, not just the “professional bidder.”
