How buyers actually find a machine at APE

Consignors ask what we do with a machine once it arrives. The honest way to answer is to describe how the buyer gets to it, because everything we do at our end is aimed at 1 of the 4 routes below.

Route 1: the catalog

Roughly 97,000 machines are listed with us on americanplantandequipment.com, sorted into 18 industries. A buyer who already knows what they need starts here, and they search the way a person in that trade talks: the machine type, the maker, the model family, and then the one number that matters in their industry.

That is why the specification is not decoration. A buyer looking for a machine of a specific working width types that width. If the listing does not carry it, the machine is invisible to the person most likely to want it. Every field you send us, and every field we add at our end, is another way for the right buyer to arrive.

Route 2: the industry pages

The second kind of buyer does not know exactly what they want. They know they need to add capacity in packaging, or replace a line in nonwovens, and they browse the industry. These buyers convert well, because they are comparing options rather than hunting one machine, and they read the whole listing.

They also decide from the photographs first. The establishing shot, the nameplate, the control panel and the working section do more here than any paragraph.

Route 3: search engines

Buyers who type a machine type and a specification into a search engine land on a listing directly. This is why we write the specification in the words a buyer uses rather than the words a maker uses, and why serial and model numbers matter. Somebody hunting a part-compatible machine searches the model family.

Route 4: the buyer network, which is the one that matters most

This is the route a listing site cannot copy. We have sold into 18 industries for decades, to buyers worldwide, many of them repeat. People tell us what they are looking for, and we watch for it.

So when your machine arrives, it does not only go into a catalog. It goes to the people who have asked us for that class of equipment, in that industry, this year. That is usually the fastest sale, and it is why the write-up has to be right before the machine is announced: the network gets 1 look at it, and a specification with a gap in it wastes that look.

What a buyer does before they commit

They compare your machine with 2 others. They look at the photographs first, the specification second, and the faults third. Then they ask 2 or 3 questions, almost always the same ones: is it complete, does it run, and what will it cost to get it home.

We answer those questions for you, from what is in front of us on our floor. That is the practical difference consignment makes. The machine is here, indoors, on the ground and near a dock, so we can walk over and look rather than emailing you to ask.

What this means for what you send

Every guide on this site ends up in the same place, and this is why:

• The 8 fields make the machine findable.
• The photographs make it credible.
• The tooling and the manuals make it complete.
• The recording of it running answers the question a photograph cannot.
• The faults, recorded honestly, keep the deal together at collection.

Send us what you have, even half of it. We will tell you what is missing and what is worth the trouble of finding, before the machine is announced to anybody.