Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers Incorporated held a three-day auction held in Ft. Worth, TX, on March 14, 15 and 16, 2000. The sale generated gross auction sales exceeding $36 million. The first two days of the auction were broadcast live over the Internet.

Nearly 2,500 registered bidders came to the sale from 46 states, seven Canadian provinces and 18 other countries including several European, Asian and Latin American countries. More than 3,000 items were sold over the course of the sale.

Bidders from outside the state of Texas made over 52 percent of the purchases.

More than 1,600 people tuned in to the auction live over the Internet. “Because our auctions are unreserved, bidders travel from around the world to participate,” said Dave Ritchie, chairman and CEO of Ritchie Bros. “This allows us to transcend local market conditions and provide a global marketplace for industrial equipment. Live Internet broadcasts allow us to reach even more people.”

Record-breaking Web site traffic accompanied the broadcasts. Unique user sessions – full visits to the rbauction.com Web site – topped 9,000 per day, up 50 percent from the previous peak levels recorded by the company.

“We are broadcasting auctions for three reasons: (1) to introduce more people to our unreserved auctions, (2) to allow absentee bidders to monitor their bids, and (3) to prepare our customers for the live real-time bidding services we are currently developing,” said Ritchie.

“This was an excellent sale to start our year here in Fort Worth,” said David Hobbs, regional manager for Ritchie Bros. “There was an exceptional turnout of bidders from all over the world, especially Latin America, and the bidding was strong throughout the auction. We were pleased so many customers were able to view the auction over the Internet and to see exactly what we can do for them.”

Over the two days of the broadcast, Web site users also completed over 16,000 equipment searches on the Ritchie Bros. web site, including 4,600 searches on the equipment being sold in the Fort Worth auction.

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