Online trading accounts for a tiny fraction of the global timber industry’s business and to date growth has been quite modest.
There are those who believe it will only ever be a sideshow for the timber trade. The natural qualities of their product, they maintain, mean that it demands more communication and direct contact between buyer and seller than the internet can provide.
Then again, a few years ago many predicted that online trading would not take off for any product. People wouldn’t take to the impersonality of the process and they wouldn’t trust website security for financial transactions. But today those predictions are rapidly unravelling.
According to the market monitoring operation comScore Media Metrix, American consumers spent a record US$2.2bn on online purchases in one week in December 2002. And on one frenetic day that week, they paid out a staggering all-time high of US$288m for non-travel goods alone. Cumulative US consumer online sales from November 1 to December 13 reached US$10.8bn, up 32% on the same period in 2001.
UK consumers log on
UK consumers are also increasingly willing to spend over the web. In fact the business is growing three times faster than in the US, according to the Interactive Media in Retail Group. It says that online sales in the UK almost doubled last year, hitting a monthly peak of £1bn for December – that means that internet trading is growing 15 times faster than general retail.
UK businesses are also following hot on the heels of consumers with the DTI estimating that half of all firms now order goods and services online – a 52% increase on 2001. The study also revealed that 91% of businesses have access to the internet, while 80% have a website. Around 20% of firms also reported making payments online, an increase of nearly 20% on this time last year.
According to the Office of National Statistics, online sales by UK businesses in the non-financial sector in 2001 were equivalent to 1% of total trade, but that still totalled a record £18.4bn.
Business-to-business sales by UK businesses reached £11.8bn while the business-to-customer total was £6.6bn. Around 81% of online orders came from within the UK, while 12% came from other EU countries and 7% from outside the EU.
So is the timber trade going to be next to lose its online inhibitions? According to the four leading online market operators featured over the next few pages, the answer is yes. They claim to have a user base in the thousands, with more companies signing up every week. And they maintain that timber transactions on line are rising in both volume and value. They’re still not claiming the internet will be the dominant trading forum for the sector, but they predict it will be an increasingly significant element and one that companies large and small cannot afford to ignore.
