April 19, 2001, 9:10 AM — Automation has helped retailers and suppliers squeeze more out of their razor-thin profits. But there's an indelible constant: Retailers and suppliers alike continue to get stuck with excess inventories that eat up warehouse space and cost big bucks to store.
That's where RetailExchange.com Inc. comes in.
The Boston-based online business-to-business marketplace for excess consumer products matches buyers and sellers in categories such as apparel, electronics, and health and beauty aids.
Last month, the online marketplace named Frank Carpenito, a veteran of Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble Co. and Purchase, N.Y.-based PepsiCo Inc., as its president and chief operating officer. Computerworld's Thomas Hoffman spent a few minutes with Carpenito, 38, to discuss his plans for the electronic exchange.
What are the differences between RetailExchange.com and other competitive exchanges?
RetailExchange was built with retailers in mind and for streamlining the negotiating process for inventory off-line in the excess space. Secondly, we have an 800-ton gorilla called Gordon Brothers [the majority shareholder in RetailExchange] that helps us deal with companies with inventory problems. The third piece [is] we really recognize that we're in an evolving marketplace [involving] speed of adoption to the Web. We're trying to dig into the marketplace to understand where it's going.
What are your short-and long-term plans?
Short term, the biggest challenge of a young company is managing its growth effectively; making sure we are actively and effectively penetrating and growing our market and building out the infrastructure needed to do that. As [we're] managing that, we also want to make sure we're advancing customer adoption [of RetailExchange]. Longer term, not unlike most young start-up companies, we have a very good [business] model and most of its aspects are working well, but we need to fine-tune what customers want us to be doing.
Also, we are clearly committed to building an excess marketplace. We're in 13 categories now, some stronger than others, so [we're] building out some of the categories we're in and adding to those categories that we're not yet in.
Right now, we're in categories like apparel, jewelry and toys. We're also in other categories like hardware and food, but those are in the infancy stages of their development.
