New Recylcing Emblem

This is the new "corrugated recycles" emblem that should be found on the bottom of each corrugated carton...

http://www.aiccbox.org/News/News_Display.asp?ID=1371

Worth Mentioning....

Two endorsements for ingenuity.

www.zapproved.com
Having trouble finding emails related to a specific project?

www.pandora.com
Better than FM, maybe Sirius, and if you own an IPOD - you should be listening to pandora.

e-collaboration. The new e-commerce

cBoxBid.com is not an auction. We believe collaboration between buyers and manufacturers will ultimately determine value. cBoxBid.com simply gives buyers the power to choose a supplier based on quality, delivery, customer service and price.

This article is more than 3 years old, but the subject matter is just as relevant today as it was back then.

For your reading enjoyment, replace the word 'auction' with collaboration!

Smart Usage of Auctions Can Save Industrial Buyers Millions

September 2005

STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—Buyers for some major corporations may be able to shave time and substantial costs from purchasing goods and services simply by employing procurement auctions wisely, says Tunay Tunca, assistant professor of operations, information, and technology. In certain cases, companies can realize improved savings by mixing auctions with negotiations in a systematic way.

Traditionally most large corporate purchases require lengthy negotiations often involving multiple sources—a process that can take months and can be very costly. Today, by embracing online bidding auctions an increasing number of companies achieve savings that amount to hundreds of millions of dollars. Case in point: Sun Microsystems, one of the industry leaders in utilizing online auctions for procurement, realized savings reaching $300 million annually.

"The internet allows a buyer to bring suppliers together simultaneously in online auctions and accomplish a major purchase in less than two hours, but there are questions about the best way to run such auctions," says Tunca, the 2005 Moghadam Family Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Questions arise particularly where companies' procurement needs are so large they must be split up among several suppliers.

While optimal procurement auction structures have long existed in theoretical economics literature, they generally involve such complex implementations that most companies justifiably simply ignore them and instead utilize a simple and often familiar "reverse" auction process, in which a select group of suppliers bids competitively for an order posted by the buyer. The buyer may choose the lowest-cost bid or split the purchase among several of the lowest-cost suppliers.

"This can work well in certain cases, but in others it can be inefficient and the buyer can end up leaving money on the table," says Tunca. Using mathematical models, he and Qiong Wu, a Business School PhD student, have teased out the conditions under which the simple single-stage reverse auction works best, and examined a more effective yet still practical format in cases where it does not.

Buyers can use a simple reverse auction to save the most money when they are in control. This occurs, Tunca and Wu found, when eligible suppliers are plentiful, when suppliers themselves have to spend money to ramp up enough to fulfill the order, and when purchasers have a good sense of suppliers' costs.

But when things are a little more uncertain and complicated—when there are few suppliers, when those suppliers can easily fill the orders without any extra investments, and when buyers are not so sure of what suppliers' actual costs are—then a simple reverse auction makes the purchaser more vulnerable to losing out on pricing. In this case, says Tunca, buyers are better off instituting a two-stage process, in which they hold an initial auction to identify the lowest bidders, but then add an additional contracting stage to negotiate further with those bidders.

"Although the purchaser accrues additional process costs associated with these negotiations, in many cases those costs are more than offset by the price savings they gain," says Tunca. "In some cases, it is possible that the net cost efficiencies obtained from running a two-stage process versus just a reverse auction can run into significant percentages."

Industrial buyers, then, may want to consider employing a two-stage procurement process more frequently, advises Tunca. "However," he adds, "companies also have to be careful about keeping good relations with their suppliers before they decide to implement such a system. Cooperation with suppliers in this decision is important to prevent unwanted disruptions in those relationships."

— Marguerite Rigoglioso

Related Information

"Multiple Sourcing and Procurement Process Selection with Bidding Events," Tunay I. Tunca and Qiong Wu, GSB Working Paper, 2005

"eSourcing Strategy at Sun Microsystems," Charles Holloway and A. Higuera, GSB Case OIT34, 2002

"Sun Shines by Combining Two Supplier Strategies," D. Hannon, Purchasing.com, May 6, 2004

The "Doctor of Sourcing" is in

If your title is buyer, purchasing agent, or procurement specialist and haven't read "the doctor's" blog, you owe it to your self to do so. I spoke with Michael "the doctor" Lamoureux about two weeks ago, he was suffering from the flu and told me so only after our conversation. I was explaining how cBoxBid.com works, and how it can benefit anyone who purchases corrugated packaging. Our conversation was short and after hanging up I really thought I blew it.

The point to this is, even while he was running at half to 3/4 speed, and me stumbling, his ability to listen, dissect information, ask the question, and then find the value is uncanny - and thats the benefit to YOU the subscriber. I remember reading one his blogs that said something like, 'if it doesn't make sense, I dont write about it'! Carry on.

http://blog.sourcinginnovation.com/

New Buyers

cBoxBid.com has signed its 40th company seeking a faster way to procure corrugated packaging via cBoxBid.com's e-commerce platform. Buyers can post an RFQ and manufacturing companies can choose to submit a price. "Sourcing the 32ect Kraft RSC (picture) is where buyers really see the savings" say's Deye, President of cBoxBid.com. "97% of all corrugated companies in the United States can manufacture an RSC and ink 1-3 colors on none, one, or all panels. "Its really the easiest way for a buyer to take advantage of the entire manufacturing community. And our Vendor Ratings take the guess work out of switching vendors."

cBoxBid.com was launched in July of 2008 and has been mentioned in:

http://www.packaging-online.com/paperboardpackaging/Breaking+News+(front+page)/New-Tool-Available-for-Buyers-and-Sellers/ArticleStandard/Article/detail/557985?ref=25

and

Official Board Markets



www.cBoxBid.com

Sustainability

Pratt Industries has a huge recycling program. In fact its raw material is old corrugated containers, but you wouldn't know it. I can remember standing next to the conveyor belt as bales upon bales of paper were first passed over a magnet, then dumped into a huge kettle and slowly mixed into a milky concoction, then viola, paper. If I recall correctly 50 tons a day went up that conveyor.

Pratt Industries pays money for those old boxes and IF your throwing them away in a dumpster, your losing money. Throwing old boxes in a dumpster is what the dumpster people want you to do. Nobody breaks them down and it helps the dumpster fill up quicker, hence more pick-ups.

It baffles me to this day, how all the geniuses at Pratt couldn't offer a recycling and corrugated packaging program that combined both.

But here's a tip: Recycling companies like Pratt will pay you for those old corrugated containers and office paper makes a fine corrugated box as well. So get on the Green band wagon because it may save you money, and you can throw around big words like sustainability.

Manufacturers Beware

Interesting information about fees and or surcharges

New research conducted by Amar Cheema, Ph.D., assistant professor of marketing at Washington University in St. Louis, provides some interesting insights about consumers' perceptions of surcharges.

• Consumers pay more attention to surcharges than what was previously thought
• How consumers think about and respond to surcharges depends, in large part, on the seller's reputation
• When buyers don't trust the seller — they are vigilant of such tactics. In many such cases, his research concludes, buyers will decide against making a purchase
• Participants took longer to make a decision when buying from low-reputation sellers than when buying from high-reputation sellers
• Sellers who divide the total price of a product or service into a base price and a surcharge could prosper when buyers ignore the surcharge
• Surcharges levied by low-reputation companies lower purchase likelihood. Thus, low-reputation companies may benefit more by offering a consolidated price
• High-reputation sellers can post higher surcharges to increase the total price paid by the buyer, but low-reputation sellers cannot do so effectively
• Low-reputation sellers can benefit by absorbing the surcharge into the base price and offering a consolidated price for a product or service

The research, holds interesting implications for businesses and their pricing practices, and looked at pricing data of online sellers, catalogs and service providers.

The paper is available at http://www.olin.wustl.edu/faculty/Cheema/CircSurchargeReputation.pdf

RFQ Dashboard Revealed

On this page - Click on October, than click October 15. If the RFQ Dashboard is not already shown on this page you can view it following those directions.

This is how manufacturers view a buyers RFQ. Manufactures can view all open RFQ's or view by state(s).

cBoxBid.com adds new features

November 3, 2008.

cBoxBid.com adds search by state and allow due dates of RFQ's to be changed. The search by state feature allows manufactures to pull down bid data by state then relevant zip codes. It makes the process of finding RFQ much quicker.

The new "due date change" feature allows buyers to extend RFQ dates based on manufacturer bids or market conditions. This was something buyers had requested and it allow buyers to extend the bid process.

Revisions

October 27th, 2008 - Atlanta, GA

cBoxBid.com signs up 100th manufacturer and makes revisions to software platform.

- Buyers can now change the due dates of RFQ's. Previously this was completed by cBoxBid.com, now buyers may change due dates of posted RFQ's
- Manufacturers can filter RFQ's by state then zip code. This gives manufacturers easier viewing of open RFQ's.

www.cBoxBid.com

New Idea for Buying Corrugated Packaging

cBoxBid.com mentioned in www.packaging-online.com
cBoxBid.com has made it easy for corrugated buyers to receive price quotes. Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Dallas, to name just a few, can now receive pricing from all regional corrugated manufacturers. Atlanta alone has over 50 corrugated manufacturers and at least 20 brokerage firms dedicated to boxes. If a buyer wants the absolute best deal, he would have to contact at least 70 companies and sort through seventy qoutes. With cBoxBid.com, the buyer has the entire marketplace at his/her fingertips. Its fast, easy and non-binding. The price starts the collaboration and with cBoxBid.com's Manufacturer Ratings on Quality, Delivery, Customer Service and Pricing, as chosen by buyers and purchasing professionals - picking a new manufacuture or vendor has never been easier.

Marc

corrugated packaging

If you buy or manufacturer corrugated in Atlanta, Georgia stay tuned...

Check us out at cBoxBid.com