Some of the things we’ve seen @ the Dojo!

As we now enter into our fifth year of business, we’d like to share with you some of the more unusual goods and services that we’ve seen tendered via our software!
For example, foodstuff seems to be a recurring category of choice.  We’ve witnessed eAuctions on anything from gourmet cheese, whipped deserts, biscuits, cooked chicken, banana purée and even pet food!

eSourcing prevents you making a dog’s dinner of your negotiation

It certainly makes the weekly shop more interesting, as we know the back-story of how that supplier’s products came to be on the shelves.

We’ve encountered eAuctions on goods that we will never fathom, such as ‘Gas Spuds’ or our personal favourite ‘Pig Launcher/Receiver’.

The infamous pig launcher

We truly hoped it might be something to do with Angry birds or perhaps even a fantastic device for aerially transporting swine from A to B in a highly efficient manner.  Sadly we have since been told it is something to do with cleaning industrial pipelines.

Speaking of industrial, we’ve witnessed a number of eAuctions for items that seem like your everyday, run-of-the-mill product but quite simply aren’t!   Dishwashers that can clean up to 3000 dishes per hour.  Ice machines that produce up to 24,500 ice cubes per day!  These are quite serious pieces of kit.

Then we move onto quite literally life-saving products that have been reverse auctioned.  Vaccines, medicines, drugs, medical sutures.  The old adage seems to apply: if you have a liquid supply market and you can define precisely what you need, you can auction it.

Sometimes reverse auctions can be a tough pill to swallow

Something we hear quite a bit on our travels is that only commodities or products can be eAuctioned.  Well, looking through some of our past successful events, it would appear that not everyone holds this view.  We’ve had auctions on pre-employment checks, canteen services, voice outsourcing services, print management and design agency services amongst many others. Our Lot Matrixcan give you the detail required for those complex tenders with many pricing aspects.

Training and consulting seem popular choices as well, from contract management training to general management consulting.  It goes to show that not everything needs a like-with-like spec as you can instead opt for a weighted auction to normalise the proposals.
Anyhow, back to bizarre stuff.  There have been quite a few auctions on dangerous chemicals including quite a worrying amount of Sodium Hydroxide.   Add to that the Aluminium Chlorohydrate and Potassium Permanganate and it sounds like we have something from Breaking Bad!

Hope you ran a reverse auction for that stuff

Before we go too off-piste, let’s end with a couple of interesting automotive items we’ve seen eAuctioned, such as machined parts for Maserati, BMW brake pedals, golf carts, fork-lift trucks and some shiny new transit vans.

Lastly, we’ve seen a fair few construction and extension tenders, including the house extension and loft conversion for Market Dojo’s very own Nick Drewe.

As for what is next going to be tendered via Market Dojo, I think you can see for yourselves that it is anyone’s guess!

About: Market Dojo provides accessible eSourcing software. Find out more atwww.marketdojo.com