AsiaTimber.net describes its online trading room as an “automated replica” of the real world of “offers and counter offers, business process and purchasing workflow”. As a result, it maintains, using the site requires little or no learning curve.
AsiaTimber.net was launched in 2001 by current chairman Clement Wong, a “senior timber executive with 12 years’ experience in the sector”. His aim was to “unite experience in timber, internet technology and business to develop the portal to enhance and improve the way people buy and sell timber products”. The operation was established as an independent market place. So, it stresses, it does not get involved in selling or purchasing, representing buyers and sellers, or in collecting payments.
Since its launch, AsiaTimber.net has attracted a user membership of 4,500 buyers and sellers from 142 countries. Top membership countries are the US, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Singapore, Canada, Germany, Australia, Thailand, Taiwan, UK, Turkey, Russia and Brazil.
The site now carries 15,000 business contacts from various areas of the international timber sector and has over 26,000 ‘postings’ of trade offers and enquiries. Each day, AsiaTimber.net maintains, it is being visited by between 350-450 users.
The site offers two types of membership: trader and content sponsor. The traders pay an annual fee of US$330 and include manufacturers, suppliers, exporters, buyers, distributors and importers of timber products. Each member is given unrestricted access to the site and to its business contact and trader directory. They can post offers, quotations and enquiries and have the facility of a free online photo showroom where they can present details of their company, products and services.
Web showroom
“A photo showroom improves a company’s visibility and frees them from the burden of maintaining their own independent website,” said an AsiaTimber.net spokesperson.
Meanwhile, the operation’s content sponsor members include timber associations and trade organisations, government agencies, corporations, institutions, research centres, events organisers and the media. They can use the site to disseminate information and news to all or selected members of the exchange.
The website is specifically designed to work in a “large corporate environment”, with each member allowed to have four users, with the option of giving employees different access levels. And AsiaTimber.net stresses that all trade is conducted confidentially between the two parties to a transaction.
Its main goal is “to promote information exchange and facilitate and execute timber trade in the global market through the provision of a centralised and neutral internet platform”. The benefits, it maintains, include speed and cost as all deals are potentially paperless, from the e-mailing of quotations, offers and counter-offers, to the dispatch of purchase orders and final sales contracts, complete with terms and conditions.
The site has markets for three product categories: timber-based panel products including plywood, particleboard, blockboard, fibreboard, MDF and veneer; other timber products such as sawn timber, logs, furniture components, charcoal, doors and parquet; and timber-related goods and services, including machinery raw materials, spare parts and timber product manufacturing consumables.
And to round off its package, AsiaTimber.net links to third party specialist sites that offer post-sales services such as shipping, logistics, trade finance, online letters of credit, cargo inspection and insurance.
Open 24 hours, seven days a week, AsiaTimber.net says its goal is to become “the online timber facilitator of choice”, a trading and information hub where users can tap into business opportunities worldwide, and especially from the Asia-Pacific region which now accounts for over 60% of world tropical log production and 75% of exports of tropical timber products.
And the trading service seems to be winning fans, with Preston Germain of Germain Lumber of the US describing it recently as “the broadest internet platform available to reach thousands of potential customers”.
AsiaTimber.net also promotes itself as a marketing and information vehicle, allowing members access to corporate news, new product and event announcements in the website’s press room. They can also use the site to “interact” with other members’ by participating its online discussion forums and market surveys.
