Auctions Online

Auctions Online

T&I Tampa Bay Runner-up

by Dave Szymanski | Tampa Bay Editor

Former IBM executive Nancy Rabenold founded Auction Management Solutions to marry online communications and auctions.

Take your mental picture of an auction - an auctioneer with a microphone barking out bids a mile a minute and audience members raising their hands holding numbered cards - now add a high-tech networks with a big screen in the same room showing names of online bidders.

That's part of what Auction Management Solutions, a Brandon-based business-to-business technology company, does. It brings online communication to auctions, or what is sometimes known as the asset disposition business. It also sells handheld data collection devices.

Its customers include Christie's, the world famous fine art auction house in New York. At one recent auction in London, Christie's used AMS' online products to sell a Pan Am airlines ticket envelope signed by The Beatles and an outfit David Bowie wore during his 1973 Ziggy Stardust tour.

It also helped client Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers, the world's largest auctioneer of industrial equipment, to sell more than $70 million worth of trucks and equipment during eight industrial and agricultural auctions in March. The largest was a two-day auction in Sacramento, Calif., which generated more than $20 million.

CEO Nancy Rabenold, 45, is a former IBM program director who thought about being an entrepreneur while cooling down on flights back from business trips with clients like the NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense. She founded AMS and incorporated it in September 1996 after the birth of her two children. Its first product debuted in 1999.

Rabenold's IBM experience, and that of her partner's, fellow IBM executive Jim Simmons, proved valuable in developing systems and working with suppliers. Privately held AMS, with a staff of 45, is profitable and has seen steady revenue growth, with double-digit increases in the millions of dollars some years. It does up to 80 auctions a day and will do about 10,000 auctions this year.

It is protective of its technology and has sued a company over patent infringement dealing with its online auction product, Online Ringman. It has also developed a suite of other related online auction technology products, including help managing events.

Next year, AMS wants to further penetrate its markets, which include auctions for fine art, real estate, heavy construction equipment, cattle and cars.

"We look at 2008 as primarily the year for the saturation of our technology within the industries we serve," Rabenold says.

AMS outsources hardware to hardware manufacturers and designs its custom software in Brandon, where it also tests its products. One of its biggest projects is its handheld evaluator device. Companies can use it for inventory control, among other uses.

AMS maintains a team atmosphere. In its corporate headquarters, there's a control room where screens show 70 auctions running. Sometimes, there are snags running online auctions. It can be as simple as a power cord. When there is a major problem, employees go into "code orange" and all converge to solve the problem.

"We become robotic and react very specifically," Rabenold says. "Technology can be tough."

REVIEW SUMMARY

Company: Auction Management Solutions

Industry: Asset disposition

Key: Help clients dispose of assets and get the most value from those assets.