Boasting the world’s largest platform for buying and selling used machinery and equipment, Machinio makes it effortless for thousands of sellers to connect with thousands of buyers, facilitating faster and more straightforward transactions worldwide.
With more than 3,000 paying members and 1.5 million listings, Machinio.com is simply the best and most comprehensive site of its kind.
Founded in 2012 in Chicago – Machinio’s global headquarters – the company expanded to Berlin in 2017 to better and more efficiently serve clients around the world, with the Canadian team being established a year later.
“We built technology that aggregates listings of used equipment into a very comprehensive database, and that is Machinio.com,” explains Operations Manager for Machinio and MachineryHost, Laura Pereira. “We work with sellers, business owners and mostly dealers of used equipment, to list their equipment and expose it to the over 1.2 million unique interested buyers that visit Machinio.com each month.”
In mid-2018, the company was acquired by Liquidity Services, a publicly-traded company based in Bethesda, Maryland that includes Liquidation.com, GovDeals.com, Network International, GoIndustry DoveBid, IronDirect, Machinio, and Secondipity.com. The company has warehouses and offices throughout the U.S. and the globe.
The million mark
Today Machinio has 70 employees, and more than 3,000 clients from various industries, ranging from agriculture and construction to machine tools, lab, and medical. There are almost a million listings of used equipment on Machinio.com in North America alone.
“We had 100 percent increase in unique buyers year-over-year, so every year we increase the opportunity pool for our clients,” says Pereira.
“We like to describe it as the Google of heavy equipment – we go to Google when we need to find something or information about something, and Machinio has become that kind of presence in the industry for used equipment. Buyers looking for used equipment go to Machinio.com, and after conducting a vetting process, we connect them to sellers that are selling exactly what they are looking for.” As of 2021, Machinio has sent its client base more than 125,000 leads per month.
All-in-one
MachineryHost is the company’s second product, a SaaS solution, that launched just over two years ago. After working with sellers and dealers of used equipment for so many years, Machinio identified the need to have a system designed specifically for used equipment dealers that would allow them to operate their entire businesses and online presence from one platform. The industry was used to using other CRMs and programs that were not specifically intended for them, and these programs were not specific nor efficient.
“We created this all-in-one software solution for dealers of used equipment that provides them with an SEO-optimized storefront (website), paired with a CRM system with inventory management, contact database, invoicing, quoting, reporting, lead management and e-mail marketing functionalities,” Pereira says. “It has been a game changer, and all of our 300-plus clients that are on it have now been able to really scale due to the time saved and the lead influx after obtaining the software.”
The software also allows users that are Machinio clients to connect their CRM to Machinio, and their listings are automatically exported to the platform, no double work involved. “The overall plan internally is to continue to grow both products from the perspective of ‘what are the challenges that our clients are facing to sell more and how can we solve them?’” says Pereira.
“MachineryHost is designed to be self-intuitive, easy to maneuver, and something that won’t keep clients in front of their computers for hours, because the nature of their work has never kept them at a desk for hours,” says Pereira. “The platform has ways to ensure that they’re able to upload their listings in minutes, and have them show up immediately on their websites.”
Making it easy
“We’re in the business of facilitating and simplifying the day to day of really busy sellers who do not have the time to be managing complex processes,” she says. “We’ve come in with really simple solutions to make their lives easier and their profits higher. We’ve historically been problem solvers in the industry, and we’re happy to continue to bridge the gap between the Heavy Equipment industry and technology.” The used equipment industry is multi-generational and global, and at one point technology was not at the forefront. With a limitless world of opportunities online, Machinio and MachineryHost leverage their relationships with clients, continuing to gather real-life knowledge of how to help them advance their businesses, and ensuring they’re keeping up with the times.
And the focus for the next year or so? Pereira and David Orlan, Director of Business Development in Canada, answer: “Really, the goal in the next few years is just to continue making our sites the easiest way for buyers to find what they need, and the most efficient way for dealers to sell their equipment, sharing a little bit more of our industry knowledge and insights to educate clients and Industry leaders on innovative solutions, keeping everything as efficient as they can on their back end so they can focus on their business,” says Orlan.
“When it comes to equipment, our clients know best, but when it comes to technology, straightforward solutions and increasing sales, we are the experts,” says Pereira. “By bringing people the opportunity to have an easy-to-manage online presence, we know that the impact on their business can be pretty significant.”
Facilitating ongoing education is important, not only for the company’s clients but for industry leaders and for prospects who may not yet be clients, but need to continue so that they can fully understand how it’s going to benefit them. Especially as there can be a definite reluctance to move into the world of technology, for many clients, and to take on board an understanding of its importance.
“We leverage that knowledge when brainstorming and creating these solutions, because we know they directly impact our clients day-to-day,” says Pereira. “What clients do every day is really what’s going to make the results. In other words, our relationship with our customers is very collaborative and ongoing.”
“We work in a pretty old school industry overall,” says Orlan. “I think everyone would probably agree with that and it’s been the same way for a long time. Anytime anything new, disruptive and ‘tech’ comes along, there are going to be some people that are reluctant to go for it,” he says.
“The pandemic, specifically, has really helped more and more people understand the importance of being online. Even people that were used to going into dealerships and reading magazines and catalogues are really forced now to go to Google, go online, and search out what they’re looking for.”
Household name
It’s definitely still a challenge, but with the tech industry booming, Machinio is becoming more of a household name every year, he says.
“There are a lot of family businesses in the manufacturing and construction industry, and sometimes we see their family members or employees stepping in to demonstrate how things work online,” says Orlan. “The owners are still the ones making the decisions at the end of day, but we’ve seen a shift with a new generation of people looking for ways to show them that things are changing and ‘look how much easier this is than the way you’ve been doing it!’
“A key point with both Machinio and MachineryHost is that we’re really just trying to let our technology do the work and save people a lot of time from the way they’ve been doing things,” he adds. “It’s really just saving time, creating a lot of efficiencies within their business so that they can really focus on selling equipment.”
There’s also a huge misconception about the complexity of technology in the Industry, adds Pereira. With multi-generational companies, there are people that have been around much longer than Machinio and its technology. “Some people have been doing things in a certain way for 30-plus years and here we come with something that says you can run your entire business from one platform,” she says. “At times, there’s a misconception that it’s going to be difficult to change, transition or embrace something new, and we have seen multiple clients be very surprised by their experiences – how it saves 50 percent or more of their time, how easy it is – and they wish that they had transitioned into it sooner. We offer the ability for them to have that kind of efficient, easy way to be introduced to technology and be able to have all the information that they need at a glance. Machinio and MachineryHost continue to be the one-stop shop in the industry.”
A primary place
Once you become a MachineryHost client – and a big chunk of Machinio clients are MachineryHost clients as well – MachineryHost basically becomes the place you primarily function from, offering integrations with external platforms that may save hours and hours of listing equipment online.
The front-end websites are designed to be SEO optimized, so not only are clients getting attention on Machinio with more than 1.2 million unique buyers coming to the platform, their own websites are also ranking higher on Google because the right technology is behind them.
“The best thing about us – and why sellers love us so much – is that buyers love us, and that’s really what we’re optimized for,” says Orlan. “We want to make it the easiest-to-use platform for end-user buyers. That’s why these dealers want to get their equipment up as well.”
With travel being a challenge at the moment, Machinio offers both buyers and sellers a unique ability to buy and sell internationally from the comfort of their home, opening up a much bigger pool of potential.
“We continue to be tapping into the $400 billion machinery industry,” says Pereira. “We work with more than 3,300 clients between Machinio and MachineryHost, but there are thousands more that we could be working with.”
Simple and collaborative
With the success of both platforms, the intention continues to be to keep it simple, concise, efficient and also applicable to every industry.
“Our relationship with our customers is very collaborative,” says Pereira. “We’re getting real feedback from real people doing this every day to make improvements and get the product where it needs to be.”
Continual client feedback allows Machinio to bring more clients on as it addresses those challenges.
“That’s probably one of our strongest features as a company – that we’re always trying to be really adaptive,” says Orlan. “We know the industry is changing all the time. We’re still very much run like a startup in the sense that we shift gears quickly and stay ahead of the game, even though we were acquired, and we’re having to be customer service-centric,” he explains.
