Sealed Bid Auction Overview
The Steel Spider Auction Platform lets steel sellers run sealed bid auctions. Often
a seller sends a list of his steel to multiple buyers and requests that they send
back their bids by a certain date and time. After the bids are received, the seller
decides who, if anyone, is awarded and contacts them to close the sale.
This is a sealed bid auction and is used by sellers to quickly identify which buyers
have an interest in their steel and the price they are willing to pay. It is especially
helpful to a seller when multiple buyers have an interest in buying the same item
by letting their bids indicate their level of interest in an item. The Sealed Bid
Auction Platform on Steel Spider automates the setup, announcement, bidding, award
and notification process making it easy for a seller to run an auction and for a
buyer to bid.
A seller
sets up a Sealed Bid Auction by uploading
an Excel File describing his steel and selecting a time a date when the bidding
ends. Our
Offering platform can be used to announce
the auction to buyers. When the bidding ends the seller can quickly determine who
made what bids and which bidder is to be awarded which items. Steel Spider can then
notify all the bidders by email of what they were awarded. The seller can download
an Excel File summarizing the results of his Auction. The seller can also have his
unsold items can be added to our
searchable inventory
using the
Automatic Data Entry process. The seller can
add the email addresses of bidders to his
Contact List
on Steel Spider so these bidders can receive future Offerings from the seller.
The Sealed Bid Auction has six distinct parts:
- Setup phase where the seller defines the items at auction and the length of time
bidding can occur.
- Sending an announcement of the auction to potential bidders.
- Bidding period in which bidders submit their bids.
- Resolution phase in which the bids are opened and the winners determined by the
seller.
- Providing each of the bidders a notification of which, if any, items he was awarded.
- Providing the seller with an Excel file containing a summary of the Auction Results.
We have included a Practice Auction functionality to demonstrate all of the features
of the auction in preparation for a seller running an actual auction. A practice
auction is the same as a "real" auction except that we simulate bidding
by having a number of fake bidders bid and let the bidding period be ended prematurely
so the seller can see the complete auction process.
Setup Phase
During the setup phase the seller sets the parameters for the auction and describes
the steel to be auctioned. The seller provides a brief overview or description of
the steel in his auction. The seller also selects the bid units - US$ or US$/CWT.
The seller can also provide additional information or conditions about his auction
such as whether a minimum bid amount applies.
The seller selects the date and time that the bidding will end. The bidding period
must be at least than 1 day but no more than one week. Both the seller and the bidders
benefit from a short bidding period. During the bidding period the seller cannot
sell the items up for bid. Buyers also need to know quickly whether or not they
have bought the steel they bid on so they can buy similar steel elsewhere, if necessary.
The Seller provides a description of his steel items in his auction. This is done
by placing the description in an Excel file by uploading it to Steel Spider. If
a Seller is currently using a file to describe his steel to his customers, our Auction
Platform has been designed such that the Excel file that the Seller provides to
describe the steel at auction can have the same layout. There are a few things to
check but generally only minor changes, if any, would be required to a file the
seller is currently using. See "Uploading your File" below for a more detailed description
of how the seller's Excel File needs to be prepared.
The seller can include from 1 up to 300 steel items in the Excel File. To make bidding
easier for a buyer, we recommend that the seller generally have less than 100 items
(one item per row) in an auction. If a seller has more items available, he can run
several auctions concurrently. Uploading the file starts the auction bidding period.
Announcement of the Auction
The seller can use
Send an Offering on Steel Spider
to announce to the users of Steel Spider that the auction is running. If the seller
has added the email addresses of bidders he knows to his
Contact List on Steel Spider, the Offering announcing his auction could
be sent by Steel Spider to them. The seller can supplement the Offering capability
on Steel Spider by sending emails or faxes directly to additional potential bidders
to announce the auction.
Bidding Period
When a bidder enters an auction a listing of the items at auction is displayed.
Before bidding a bidder should clarify with the seller any questions he has regarding
the items at auction as well as the terms and conditions that apply should he be
awarded any items. During the bidding period, the bidder enters his bid for those
items he wishes to bid on and submits his bids. A bidder can place bids and revise
his bids at any time during the bidding period. A bidder can download an Excel File
containing his bids of all the items at auction or just the items he bid on.
The sealed bid auction platform lets anyone who has registered and is logged-in
with Steel Spider bid. Registration provides us with the bidder's contact information
so we can let the seller know how to contact the bidder. Registration is free. There
is no advantage to waiting to place your bids. A bidder is not told the bids of
the others involved or the identity of the other bidders.
The seller does not see any of the bids until the bidding period ends. During the
bidding period, the seller can see the contact information of those who have bid
so he can initiate any credit checks or other actions to vet the bidder. The seller
can download the contact information of these bidders to an Excel file.
Offsite bidders - For those customers of the seller who elect to send their
bids directly to the seller, we allow the seller to bid for these customers on Steel
Spider during the bidding period. When a seller selects one of his auctions for
Bidding, there is an Offsite Bidders button he can use to add a company name and
an email address for an offsite bidder. He can select that bidder and bid for him.
The bidders he adds and bids for will be included in the auction results so he can
have a complete record of all the bidding when the auction ends. If an email address
has been provided the Offsite Bidder will also receive the notifications sent to
the other bidders is the seller elects to send them. Otherwise the seller will need
to contact them directly to advise them of the items they were awarded when the
auction is complete.
Resolution Phase
When the bidding period has ended, the seller reviews the bids and the bidders and
determines to whom he will award each steel item. Our auction recognizes that there
are times when the seller needs the flexibility to not award to the highest bidder.
See the "Seller's Award Process" below for more information. Steel
Spider shows the seller, for each item at auction, all of the bidders on the item
and their bid. The bidder with the highest bid is initially selected as the winner
of that item. The seller can select another bidder as the winner or elect that no
bidder won the item. The seller can also review a listing of all the items won by
each bidder.
Bidder Notification
When his review is completed and the items have been awarded, the seller can have
Steel Spider generate separate emails to each of the bidders. Those who were not
awarded anything will the notified as such. Those who were awarded items will receive
an email identifying that they were awarded some items and all the items they were
awarded and their bid amounts will be in an attached Excel file. Copies of these
emails are also sent to the seller. The seller and the winning bidders then take
whatever steps are necessary to create purchase orders or other contractual documents
that are required to complete the transactions.
Auction Results Summary
The seller can download an Excel file that summarizes the results of his auction.
The Excel file contains a worksheet summarizes the auction results and shows the
seller who was awarded each item and the bid amounts. There is a worksheet containing
the descriptions of the steel items that were displayed on Steel Spider. Another
worksheet contains the contact information (name, company, email address, phone)
of each bidder. A third worksheet displays a table showing, for each steel item,
the high bid of each bidder. Additional worksheets show for each bidder the items
each was awarded. An additional worksheet shows which items were not awarded.
Unsold Items to Searchable Inventory
For those items were not awarded the seller can elect to have these items added
to the searchable Inventory using our Automatic Data Entry System. In this manner
buyers on Steel Spider receiving
Inventory Alerts that
correspond to these items will be notified by email that they are available. Buyers
searching the Inventory after the auction is concluded can also find these items
and contact the seller if they are interested in them.
Other
The seller can have the contact information of all the bidders who have registered
with Steel Spider added to your
Contact List.
After the items have been awarded and the bidders have been notified, the seller
can delete the information about the auction from the Steel Spider website. It will
be automatically deleted about 1 week after the bidding ends.
Seller's Award Process
We recognize that in certain situations it may not be in the seller's best interest
to always award an item to the highest bidder. After all the bids have been submitted
during the Bidding Period, the seller can review the bids and the bidders and elect
to not award to the highest bidder. The decision of who is awarded an item will
take the amount bid into consideration but other factors are also considered by
the seller.
Reasons for not awarding one or more items to the highest bidder can include:
- not receiving any suitable bids above the seller's (normally undisclosed) reserve
price.
- the bidder would "win" more than the seller is willing to sell to that bidder based
on the bidder's credit line or history.
- the amount the bidder would "win" would not constitute a truckload making delivery
problematic.
- the seller's past history with the bidder or the bidder's reputation.
- the seller's unfamiliarity with the bidder.
Uploading your File
After you define the basic parameters for your auction like its description and
when the bidding ends, you upload an Excel file that contains a description of your
steel. For this to work as intended we made some assumptions about the content of
your file. You might need to make minor changes to your file to reflect these assumptions.
- Your Excel file can be in a number of Excel formats (Excel 2007 .xls, Excel 2010
.xlsx, comma separated values .csv).
- Only one (the first) worksheet is read by the website. If your file contains multiple
worksheets and Steel Spider reads the wrong worksheet, delete the inapplicable worksheets
from your file and upload again.
- The top row contains the headers. This top row provides the names of the data in
each column as you want them to appear in the auction.
- Each column header must be unique - two columns can not have the same name.
- All of the information describing a steel item needs to be on a single row.
- Limit the number of steel items to 300 rows or less, preferably 100 items or less.
If you have more items split your file into multiple files and set up additional
auctions.
- Delete any rows or columns within the worksheet that you don't want to appear. Hiding
a row or column in the Excel file will not prevent Steel Spider from seeing and
reading the data. You will need to delete the row or column if you don't want it
to appear.
- Combine multiple identical items into a single item (row) to avoid a situation where
you have multiple bids on one item and few or none on another identical item.
When your file is read by Steel Spider any empty rows or columns are ignored. A
column with all zeros is ignored too. If your file has columns with names like Comments
or Remarks or chemistries (C, Mn, P, etc.) these are displayed in a separate row
under the other descriptive information about the item.
Remember to save a changed Excel file to a different filename if you want to keep
the original file.
Tailoring your Auction
There are a number of ways we can tailor your auction to make it easier for you
to setup your auction or announce the awards to the bidders. If you use location
codes, defect codes or other codes in your Excel file, we can set up the auction
process to dynamically change these codes to more appropriate text so you do not
need to change these codes in the your file before you upload. Email us a table
that shows the code and the text it should be replaced with before you want to set
up your auction. We will set this up so that it can apply to all your auctions.
We can also tailor the emails that are sent at the conclusion of the auction to
use a HTML template tailored to your needs instead of the default template.
Trial or Practice Auction by a Seller
To allow a seller to test the auction platform and know what to expect, a seller
can go through the entire auction process in a matter of minutes by running a practice
auction. He sets up the auction as he would above for a "real" Auction and starts
the bidding period. After the bidding phase on the auction has started the seller
can click on his auction from the Setup page. He will see a list of his active Auctions.
Select the one just created and started - it will have a Status of "Bidding Started".
The next page shows the contact information of all those who have made a bids. Since
the Bidding Period just started there will be no bidders listed.
To turn this into a Practice Auction we provide a mechanism to simulate bidding.
There is a button, "Add Bids by Fake Bidders", on this page that will cause a number
of fake bidders to bid randomly on the items in the auction. Press this button and
when this bidding is complete the page will show the contact information for these
fake bidders just as it would appear if they had been actual bidders. Since this
is now a practice auction, end the Bidding Period to see how the results are provided
to the seller. Press the "Force the Bidding Period to End" button. The seller will
see his auction has a Status of "Completed" and the Auction is in its Resolution
Phase. Selecting this auction again will show the results of the bidding. The seller
will see a table of the items at auction and a drop down box of the bidders and
their bids. The bidder with the highest bid is initially selected. The seller can
change to whom an item is awarded by selecting another bidder of an item using the
drop down box. The seller can also elect to not award the item to any bidder. The
seller can also use the dropdownbox to select an individual bidder. If the seller
does not want to award to a particular bidder, he can change these items had have
them awarded to someone else.
If the seller wants to see how Steel Spider notifies the bidders after the auction
is over he can have Steel Spider send an email to each of the bidders letting them
know what, if anything, was awarded to him. The email addresses for the fake bidders
are "@steelspider.com" email addresses so they will not be delivered but the Seller
will receive copies of each of the emails sent. The seller is also be able to download
an Excel file that contains the results of the auction. Finally he can delete his
auction. This process allows a seller to quickly walk through all of the steps involved
in running an actual sealed bid auction on Steel Spider.
Steel Spider's Role
Steel Spider is providing a platform where the auction is run by the seller. Steel
Spider acts as a venue to allow North American companies to offer, sell, and buy
steel and other products in an auction-style format. Steel Spider is neither a principal
interested in the transactions, nor an agent of Buyer or Seller. Steel Spider has
no control over the quality or legality of the items advertised or the truth or
accuracy of the postings or the ability of sellers to sell items or the ability
of buyers to buy items. We cannot ensure that a buyer or seller will actually complete
a transaction. Bidding does not create a binding relationship between the buyer
and the seller nor between Steel Spider and the bidder or the seller. After the
bidding period ends the buyer and the seller deal directly with each other. A binding
relationship between the buyer and the seller occurs when the necessary contractual
documents between the seller and the buyer are agreed. Steel Spider provides no
warranty on the auction but the auction can be rerun should that become necessary.
No commission is paid to Steel Spider by either the buyer or the seller. There are
no buyer's premiums or seller's premiums. We charge a flat fee per month
to the seller to use the auction platform as many times as he wants during a calendar
month.