Forkliftaction.com founder and executive director Michael Leu

Four years of hard work has come to fruition for Forkliftaction.com founder Michael Leu with yesterday's launch of the Forkliftaction.com Marketplace.

"The idea was conceived in 2001 to have a Marketplace for the industry," Leu said.

He explained the Marketplace was the reason for the creation of his brainchild, the Forkliftaction.com website and weekly email newsletter.

"But first we had to build a community and that's why it has taken four years of doing that and of hard work and sacrifices to make it happen," Leu said.

The Forkliftaction.com community enjoys a wide variety of resources that are free to anyone who registers as a member. Members can receive the latest industry news in a weekly e-mail newsletter, scour the Resume list to find industry professionals, post job ads to offer employment, meet their overseas counterparts through the Discussion Forums (or create business deals as many members have), survey the list of Tenders and Events listings, check equipment specifications in the Spec Checker or place Media Releases and Text Ads to be viewed by more than 50,000 international readers.

General manager Ann Hofmans said the website received 81,000 plus visits and more than 2,800,000 hits each month.

"This number is expected to grow with the launch of our Marketplace. We are getting new members each week and industry professionals are joining to reap the benefits of our free business resources. The sheer size of this community has resulted in new business opportunities for its members," Hofmans said.

Hofmans and her team spent the past 12 months developing and designing the Marketplace.

Forkliftaction.com general manager Ann Hofmans

"For the past three months, we tested the Marketplace with a number of international dealers to ensure its user-friendliness. We've listened to their feedback and implemented some of their suggestions but overall their response was very positive," she said.

"They suggested ways of overcoming language differences for technical terms to describe the equipment."

Leu said technical language was an important factor as the website catered to a global audience.

"In fact, we plan to have our website translated to several different languages in future. Many members have asked us to and there's certainly a lot of international exchange being carried out via our website - be it information, technical help or business dealings," he said.

"We also aim to build an online employment database for the forklift industry. I envision these projects to commence within the next 12 months. The Internet is a wonderful medium that has sped transactions up but because it's such a fast moving one, you have to move very fast to keep up with it," Leu said.

The Marketplace, which currently has 9176 listings of used-equipment from a wide variety of popular brands, is now open to the Forkliftaction.com community.

It complements Forkliftaction.com's independent news as the main offering for its members. Industry professionals looking for accurate and unbiased news specific to the industry have been receiving Forkliftaction.com's weekly newsletter for the past four years.

"The news is an important source of information and a valuable resource to industry professionals, However, the online Marketplace will actually facilitate business between people from far and near," Leu said.

The Marketplace was built with geographical regions in mind. Maximising the Internet's potential to cross borders, users can choose the "international" setting to perform a search for used-equipment located overseas. Alternatively, the "local" and "national" settings assure users of finding equipment located within their own country.

"This was the idea behind building an online Marketplace - using the advantages of the Internet to improve the business process and to reach out to new markets, both local and international," Leu said.

A dealer who participates in the Marketplace has full control of his stock items. He can create new listings, and edit and cancel them when the units are sold. The Marketplace also caters for wholesale trading from dealer to dealer.

"We encourage our dealers and fleet managers to add up to four photos of each unit for sale, with the help of a simple upload function for their online stock list. We offer a free electronic import service direct from the dealer's stock list document for dealers with big stock lists," Hofmans said.

To facilitate international business, the user has got a range of filters at his disposal when performing searches. He can choose from the imperial or metric measurement units and from six different major currencies - the USD, EURO, CAD, GBP, AUD and JPY.

Hofmans said the Marketplace features will definitely keep growing.

"We are already working on a 'miscellaneous' category in the Marketplace as dealers have expressed their interest in listing their used parts, components, special trailers, accessories, etc," she said.

She added that the company was especially keen to learn from buyers and sellers on how it can further improve the tool for their benefit.