09/30/2021
Our Story
Electrical industry peers ask me all the time where did you come up with the idea to create the Surpluselectrical websites?
Like many things the idea was born from necessity. Was a contractor for 30 years and decided to downsize from the many years of running 20-50 employees. Had a huge surplus problem and started looking for a place to sell it. Kijiji and Facebook Marketplace are garbage with no automations that consume far too much time. The users find more joy in insulting you than buying your products! E-bay is totally unregulated with thousands selling electrical products that have no idea what they are or their proper value. An auction is very risky and can go very wrong!
Large surplus warehouses are willing to buy it but if you want a decent ROI that’s not the thing to do either. In some cases, if you don't care what they give you they certainly are a good place to go. We have our own warehouse now and buy lots of surplus from sellers just looking to get rid of it.
Like everyone else in the industry many of the products we had have value. There is the usual percentage that doesn't and needs to find the recycle bins and that is hard for some. There is always that one person that may need that one day........
Many years ago, before googling even existed I had started a website called electricalhowto.ca. I launched it and had very limited success as the world was not ready for e-commerce! This time around most buyers are ok with buying online. There are expectations for security and proper automations to make the process smooth and painless. We started looking at various platforms to build from. We also part way into that process talking with industry peers and soon realized we all have the same problems, and they also needed a place to sell products. That is when we turned the corner to become multivendor!
We decided on the Magento Multivendor Marketplace platform. It started out simple, but we started buying surplus as surpluselectrical.ca rose to the top of the google rankings across Canada. We then required a fully functioning sales counter that seamlessly synced our inventory levels for walk-in, phone, and email orders. We developed POS and inventory control which really moved us from being just another e commerce site to be more like a full business software package. Tracking sales, salesperson performance and full inventory control was the target. In just a few short months we nailed it!
What next? The decision was made to expand, we developed and added Surpluselectrical.com to our arsenal! The challenges for shipping arose immediately as we had partnered with Smartt Shipping, a Canadian 3RD party provider for our .ca solution. They provided us with both parcel and LTL live quote capabilities for Canada. To accomplish this same automation in the US market we ended up reaching out to Freight Quote and Goshippo for our API's. We are now looking to build .mx, toss in language barriers and the need for another shipping solution. This one may take a little longer! Stripe was chosen as our payment portal, more robust with features Paypal only talks about made them the obvious choice from day one!
In closing we are the #1 Electrical Industry Multivendor Marketplace solution in North America! We vet all our vendors to ensure products are represented correctly. We do not regulate prices as some just want to unload while others may be looking for a stronger ROI. We focus on B2B sales among our industry peers to assist with surplus inventory issues for all our vendors. This creates opportunities for others in the electrical business to reduce delivery times and reduce purchasing costs. It also creates a place to trade in those hard-to-find products and assist in fulfilling the need for emergency products. What are you waiting for, subscribe today! Buy-Sell-Auction and even request electrical products!
