Doing business on eBay.

• Author: Lang, Eva M.
• Position: New site for small businesses - Brief Article

CPA firms and their clients may want to take advantage of the eBay (www.ebay.com) expansion into business-to-business.

If you think that the online auction site eBay is a virtual flea market of mom-and-pop businesses selling tchotchkes and baseball cards, you need to update your thinking. eBay is an important distribution channel for several major companies including IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Sun Microsystems, who market to businesses. Last year, sales to small businesses totaled more than $1 billion, prompting eBay to open a business-to-business site at . Thousands of high-volume operations have signed up to use a new tool designed by eBay and Accenture to help business customers sell idle assets, excess inventory, and returned products on this site. In fact, Accenture started a consulting group that advises businesses on how to sell through eBay () to capitalize on the tremendous growth in this distribution channel.

It is easy to understand the attraction for both buyers and sellers. Sellers can dump excess inventory...