Newsweek Japan
U.S. Business Trend section
Published: March 13, 2002
© 2002 Susanne M. Alexander

Deal Rooms by eWinWin

Companies have a new way to play the buying game these days--restricted access Internet-based DealRooms. Set up by application service provider eWinWin, a DealRoom lets a company cut both costs and prices by offering the same product to many customers at the same time, provided they all agree to the same ship date. The technique is best suited for companies that employ the same manufacturing line for several products and aim to utilize their facilities more efficiently, explains Greg Mesaros, founder and CEO. The more of the same product they can make at once, the fewer expensive production line changes they have to make.

DealRooms stay online as long as the company wants to sell the product. Each lists the price per item at varying volumes, as well as the volume of orders so far, encouraging buyers to increase orders to drive up volume and cut price. Each company has a single DealRoom, but can run several different sales within it, limiting each to different customers. eWinWin sets up the rooms and, for an additional price, helps line up customers.

Weatherchem Corp., a plastic lid maker, lost smaller customers when it increased its minimum order size. But now that they can join with others to boost volume, many are coming back, says Mozelle Jackson, president. Weatherchem's revenue for products it offers in DealRooms are up 118 percent over the same period of the previous year. ((FYI: Jun-Nov 2001 with DealRooms compared to Jun-Nov 2000 without; Jun-Nov is the first half of the company's fiscal year.))

Different companies use DealRooms differently. Steel industry distributor S&J Industrial Supply takes advantage of eWinWin's extra services, paying it to contact thousands of manufacturers and fabricators and invite them to its DealRoom. Bridgestone-Firestone's U.S.-only information services division is rolling out a DealRoom to offer high-speed printing of invoices and bank statements. And Mesaros is planning for even more variety--of the geographical kind. "The strength of the model will be when it goes fully global," he says, "and a DealRoom includes companies from North America, Europe and Asia.".