Components Remarketing
THEN
Dan Martin started out in the electronics recycling industry as a high school graduate with an idea and a willingness to knock on doors.
Three decades later, Martin, the founder and CEO of Dan-Mar Components, Deer Park, N.Y., has built a business based on his idea, but one that would be hardly recognizable to the Dan Martin of 1980.
In the early 1980s, e-mailing and Web sites weren’t options, and even fax machines were not in wide use, recalls Martin. There was, however, a greater amount of electronics manufacturing taking place in the United States, in such hot spots as California, Massachusetts and in Texas, where Tandy Corp. had a significant presence.
"Before the Internet, there would be localized jobbers who would approach the big plants," recalls Martin. These entrepreneurs would offer to help the OEMs market their excess components inventory.
"A successful visit might mean you’d come away with a truckload of components, and then you’d get to work making phone calls, sending out samples and placing classified ads," says Martin.
Manufacturers and other business owners and managers who had excess components or entire obsolete units "didn’t have a lot of options," says Martin. "Some used to throw excess inventory away, even if it was circuit boards containing 18 to 20 percent copper and some gold."
In the mid- and late 1980s, the fax machine became a factor in the components remarketing business. "Some OEMs would fax hand-written lists over to us," recalls Martin.
As a marketer of components, targeted faxes to larger customers was added to Martin’s sales methods, joining direct mail, telephone calls and classified ads placed in publications such as Nuts and Bolts magazine, a publication received by a range of potential buyers, including computer hobbyists and procurement officers for contract manufacturers.
As more of the world—especially the tech world—moved online in the 1990s, the use of e-mail and then the World Wide Web increased quickly and dramatically.
NOW
The pace of technological change has presented both challenges and opportunities to electronics recyclers.
On the operations side, parts and components may lose value so quickly (and so thoroughly) that electronics recyclers have to re-think their disassembly and re-marketing efforts daily.
According to Joe Clayton, president of Mayodan, N.C.-based Synergy Recycling, for some components "the prices have plummeted—the prices received are almost the same as for recovering the materials through recycling."
But unless they need to be destroyed for security reasons, components like processors, RAM chips and some high-end graphic chips retain a thriving market, says Clayton.
Dan Martin of Dan-Mar Components, Deer Park, N.Y., says his company procures its inventory from both OEMs offering excess inventory and recyclers who reclaim components. The company stocks two facilities, including its 50,000-square-foot headquarters, with a digitally catalogued inventory that can be searched by customers around the world 24 hours per day.
"Now, we don’t sell anything—people buy from us," he says. "We post it on the Web and we belong to electronic services who also post what Dan-Mar has so that manufacturers in other parts of the world will have access to it."
The center of electronics manufacturing is now in East Asia, and Dan-Mar’s sales activity reflects that. "I’d say 65 percent of what we sell ends up in the Far East," Martin says. "Brokers based here in North America may buy from us and still send what they buy over there."
Early in Dan-Mar’s foray into Web-based marketing, Martin says he had to be convinced by an employee that listing inventory on e-Bay would be good for business and not a distraction. "At first I wanted nothing to do with it, but my IT guy said we could sell small lots of some types of chips. It turns out I was totally wrong—we tapped right into a waiting market of things we could sell."
Martin says relationships and integrity remain unchanging aspects of the business, but the ways that sellers link with buyers will most likely continue to change.
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