An online marketplace for high-tech electronics will launch tomorrow with a strategy to filter out counterfeit parts and offer anonymous, secure transactions to buyers and sellers in the secondary market.
Verical, a start-up backed by venture capital firm Valhalla, qualifies the sellers in its network and audits the inventory in its Web-based catalog, assigning a rating to each part based on its chain of custody, or pedigree. This enables sellers to turn their excess inventories into cash, and buyers to know just what they’re getting, co-founder John Brown, vice president of marketing & strategy, told Managing Automation in a recent interview.
The online marketplace can help manufacturers deal with ever-changing forecasts and resulting parts shortages, Chris Cookson, vice president of supply chain and operations at the company, told MA in an interview. The primary supplier channel may not be able to react quickly enough, especially as the market starts to recover from the downturn. Generally, “about 40% of purchasing’s time is spent scouring 1% of parts,” he said. “We provide a safe source of parts, available on demand, and we execute transactions quickly through our automated system.”
The catalog is built on a so-called rich Internet application, Brown said. A buyer can find out “in a few seconds” what parts are available, along with date codes, lot codes, prices, and features. Verical can automatically upload data from Excel spreadsheets to the online catalog, company executives said.