Foster City, CA June 21, 2001 Online auctioneer DoveBid announced this week that it will hold a Web cast of a two-day auction dubbed "Dot.Com Exchange III," which will feature the assets of more than 20 failed dot-com companies.
Featured failures will include erstwhile online print procurement marketplace Impresse, B2C home delivery network Kozmo.com and a host of lesser-known not-coms, including the perhaps aptly named Burst.
The assets for sale will include computer equipment, networking equipment, office furnishings and telecommunications equipment, as well as the expected detritus of a dot-com gone dot-kaboom, such as foosball tables and scooters.
"Our first Dot.Com Exchange attracted about 300 bidders," said Kirk Dove, DoveBid's president of auction services and chief auctioneer. "We now anticipate at least 1,000 bidders will participate in each of our upcoming Dot.Com Exchanges."
With no evident sense of irony, Dove said that the auctions have become popular because they offer good deals on fairly new equipment and the ability to participate over the Internet. "At times, we've had as many as 100 bidders from the Internet actively competing for the same asset, and have logged bidders from all six inhabited continents into the same auction," Dove said. Interest in Antarctica apparently remains cool.
This is the third Dot.Com Exchange that DoveBid has conducted in the past three months. The last exchange, in May, included assets from over 40 companies and drew 200 bidders in person and 1,000 via the Internet.
Jeffrey Simon, president of Jesco Enterprises, for one, is an avid fan of the auctions. "Like everyone else these days, I'm watching my corporate budget pretty carefully," Simon said. "Purchasing items at auction prices is a very practical way to make my [information technology] dollars stretch just a little further."
The Dot.Com Exchange III will take place at the Hyatt San Jose beginning at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time on Tuesday, June 26, and continuing through Wednesday, June 27, 2001. Detailed preview information, a full asset catalog, and online bidding instructions are available for viewing at DoveBid's Web site.
