Joe Andrieu, regarding the Shopatron:
“Their system is remarkably simple. They host an online store for a manufacturer, such as Callaway or Brooks. The store is branded 100% as the manufacturer’s and visitors to the manufacturer’s website are seemlessly directed to the store as a way to purchase products. Customer orders are placed on a retailers-only bulletin board, with a fixed price for retailers to “bid” on the right to fulfill that order. Retailers who bid essentially say “Yes, I have that product in inventory and I’ll ship it at that fixed price.”
Once each day, Shopatron resolves all of these bids, sending them to the nearest retailer. That retailer boxes up the product and send it to the customer. The customer gets the product with local support, quickly, and with minimal shipping costs. The retailer gets a new customer and the profit from the sale.
In cases where no retailers want the bid, the manufacturer ships the product themselves. And because nobody wanted it, there is no channel conflict, just higher margins.”