Online bidding for manufacturing work

MFG.COM receives alot of press, buyers are immedatly attracted to it, the downsides are that the contractor/fabricator has to pay a huge dollar volume with no guarantee of work. I represent a consortium of different fabricators with different specialities, I paid the full sum, in US Dollars to MFG.COM and we responded to over 500 different opportunities - close to 4 months of estimating, endorsing non-disclosure agreements; end response - no winning tenders.

We found that we supplied alot of budget related estimates with no commitment to purchase within an immediate time frame. Of those that where interested, went to larger firms that had an excellent price point on material and low labor rates compared to Alberta, Canada.

One suggestion, try it - if at all possible try it for 1 free month for the services that you can supply. I wish we would have. Good Luck.

the system works, although you may not greatly benefit from it, if you are not located in a country that makes you competitive. this is a global system, and you'll be competing with people from all over the world, like Malaysia, where we are, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, etc.....

but there in mfg.com. you have to access few suppliers, only on basis of the quote, but may not know fully about the quality or promoters of the vendor who gives the quote. Isn't that quite a risk? There is also a horror story, with emachineshop, which asks you to draw your part on their software and give instant quote. But no guarantee, before the job gets delivers, price and period may become a yo-yo.

One is planned I heard, is www.custompartsonline.com which is still under trials, but will remove all the anomolies mentioned above, and gives you a quote with guarantee of known supply base and delivery schedule. Wait. Probably, I heard this would start by Dec or Jan at the most!

Goodluck,

Chan Luci.

In January of this year I bought a machine shop that was striving for work. I have years of machining experience but not in bringing in work. I started an mfg.com account in february. I have since landed close to 40 jobs some repeating. There are the companies that put jobs on mfg all the time looking for the cheapest bidder, Then there are those looking using it like yellow pages to meet someone then do business with them directly. DO NOT USE SOURCEAUTHORITY.COM. mfg.com costs me 550.00 month and so far has been worth it. Have got few bad apples though.

Kyle C&S Machine

Hi www.custompartsonline.com is now fully functional

Chan luci

http://www.outsourceauthority.com is free, from what I understand. They are big on proven quality though. My friend that runs a 5 axis shop says its hard to get in with them but once you have a relationship with a rep there, its pretty nice.

Found a newly launched site www.TobidIt.com which looks like it will be very successful for Buyers and Suppliers globally. The subscription rates are only a fraction of competitors. I have a friend who knows the founders and know there dedication and capital commitment to be the online B2B market leader quickly.

Job Shop Owner

You can post or bid on manufacturing jobs for free at http://www.contractauction.com. You can post or bid on anything from clothing to machine shop work.

DO NOT SIGN UP FOR MFG.COM UNLESS YOU ARE WILLING TO LOSE MONEY ON THE JOBS POSTED. ON AVERAGE YOU WILL SEE MORE THAN 40 QUOTES ON A JOB. NOT WORTH IT ALL ALL