Auckland company lists digger on Trademe for $1

An Auckland compact equipment company has pulled a risky move by listing a digger worth $38,985 for one dollar, no reserve on Trademe, in a promotion for the lead-up to the Fieldays.

The auction has been running since Queen’s Birthday weekend and closes on Sunday June 19.

It had generated 46 bids and reached $23,600 by Tuesday. (Check out the latest bidding it by clicking here.)

Endraulic Sales manager, Blair Sargison who created the auction page said he had to “think twice” before clicking the ‘list’ button to start the auction.

“I was very concerned, having said that, I’m still very concerned. At the moment we are still on target to lose a lot of money. ”

Although the digger is still under recommended retail price, the auction has generated good publicity for the company and for the brand of digger – a 1.8 ton Sunward Mini-Excavator, which is new to New Zealand.

“We have had just fewer than 13,000 views of the auction so far and we are expecting to get a lot more. So far, it’s been very good. I suspect we won’t make any money out of it though, but that’s not the idea. We are expecting to lose money.”

Endraulic specializes in compact and heavy earth-moving equipment and has been participating in the Fieldays for seven years.

Mr Sargison said raising money for a charity through the auction was something that was considered but Endraulic is currently not in the financial position to do so.

“We were looking at raising money for a charity but we have been going through a bit of a tough time over the past three years with construction. My concern was that if we promised money to a charity, we might then have to turn around and say we didn’t make any money.”

Endraulic Ltd is hoping to be in a better position next year and to raise money for charity in further auctions.

“We want to produce another auction and give the money raised to charity, but unfortunately this time, we are not in the position to do that,” Mr Sargison said.

The idea to create an auction came about by how popular one dollar no reserve auctions are on Trademe.

“I thought I’d give it a go with one of our diggers,” Mr Sargison Said.

Mr Sargison said it has been interesting watching the auction progress.

“I certainly didn’t expect it to jump up to over $20,000 so quickly, especially because we didn’t advertise it. To have it reach such a high price in less than 24 hours was very surprising.”

Mr Sargison said if he had his time again, he would not start the auction so early before the Fieldays was due to start, because it generated so much success in such a short period of time.

“In one hand, I would be a lot happier if it was still at a couple of thousand dollars and people had held off their bidding until the end. Now we are going to have people coming along here to the Fieldays, saying ‘Where’s this one dollar auction?’ and all of a sudden it’s up to $23,600 already.”

Endraulic Ltd has turned to online mediums like Trademe for advertising their company and has found that money spent on print advertising has dropped dramatically over the last two years.

“It’s just incredible how powerful Trademe is in getting your product noticed. It’s now a big part of our marketing, which two years ago, would not have been considered,” Mr Sargison said.

“If we had to drop some of our marketing revenue, it would be print advertising. Already we spend under half of what we would two years ago on print advertising.”

The auction on Trademe has generated positive feedback, with one potential buyer writing, “My little boy turns two next month and he would absolutely love this!”

Mr Sargison wrote back saying “Yes he would. But then he’d get given a Megatron Transformer and the digger would be in the forgotten toys pile in no time.”

With young children of his own Mr Sargison knows what new toys are like.

“They don’t stay new for long, and then they’re forgotten about.”