It is becoming increasingly prevalent among online wholesale suppliers to offer their wares and products through live Internet auctions. In short this means the wholesaler places listings on their website for their various products and invite retail buyers to bid on them. After a predetermined period of time the bidding closes and the highest bidder gets the merchandise.

Bidding for wholesale merchandise is an excellent way for a retailer to try and find merchandise for the price they are willing or able to pay for it. As any experienced retailer knows having that kind of control over the price of merchandise is a powerful tool to ensure a maximum of profitability.

It is becoming increasingly prevalent among online wholesale suppliers to offer their wares and products through live Internet auctions. In short this means the wholesaler places listings on their website for their various products and invite retail buyers to bid on them. After a predetermined period of time the bidding closes and the highest bidder gets the merchandise.

Bidding for wholesale merchandise is an excellent way for a retailer to try and find merchandise for the price they are willing or able to pay for it. As any experienced retailer knows having that kind of control over the price of merchandise is a powerful tool to ensure a maximum of profitability.

It all seems pretty simple and strait forward manner to acquire needed merchandise while keeping an iron hand on expense. However there are some subtleties and potentials for pitfalls, for example setting your bidding limits too low can lead to you not getting enough merchandise and setting too high can take a big chunk out of your profits.

In order to explore some of the intricacies of the wholesale bidding process let’s take a look at a company that has made a huge success of real time bidding, Bidz.com.

Located in Culver City, California, Bidz.com has been providing wholesale jewelry to retail business all over the country for years and enjoys an excellent reputation for price, quality, and dependability among jewelry retailers.

Visiting their home page, bidz.com, will show you the products that are available for auction at the present moment shown twelve at a time. Each entry displays the product with a link to more information, the time remaining to bid with those ending soonest listed first, and the present high bid. There is also a compare price which shows the potential buyer what the maximum price other jewelers are offering the same items for.

In order to place bids you must first become a registered user. To register you must provide a username, password and valid contact information. In the case of Bidz.com your username is available to any visitor and so shouldn’t provide more info or communicate something you wouldn’t want the general public to see. You will receive a conformation email and then your ready to go.

Once you have registered you can begin placing bids on merchandise. After logging in you will be taken to a page entitled My Bidz Control Center. From the control center you can manage your account, manage your active bids, as well as perform other functions including maintaining a watch list of products you’re interested in.

You can use Bidz.com’s watch list feature to keep track of items you want to monitor closely so you can bid on them when you’re ready. Either when your budget allows or when you’ve had a chance to research the desirability of a particular item.

The actual bidding is a simple affair and can be performed either from the product pages or from the My Bidz Control Center. The box provided will show the present and bid and you can simply type in the amount by which you want to increase it. The minimum allowed increase is one dollar.

Incidentally a feature of Bidz’s bidding system I love is that when a bid is placed on an item during the last 15 seconds of a bidding period another fifteen seconds is added to the clock. This additional time helps mitigate the effect of sniping and allows buyers to avoid the trap of missing much needed merchandise simply because the final bid rolled in with only seconds top spare.

Everything explained above and a good deal more is available at Bidz.com’s unusually helpful help section and buyers guide. They provide a very good glossary of auction terms as well as tips on bidding and avoiding fraud.

These are rare and valuable tools for Bidz’s customers. Most wholesale suppliers would like to pretend that fraud doesn’t exist and ignore the problem entirely. Bidz’s refreshingly informative help section is standard that all wholesale businesses would do well to duplicate but until they do this feature helps Bidz stand well above the competition in this respect. Add to this a well-organized site, fast customer service, and years of experience and you’ve found a very good wholesale jewelry supplier.
Art Micklewraith is a freelance writer and regular contributor to Top Ten Wholesale. He can be reached at Content and Solutions or by email at artmicklewraith@gmail.com