INDUSTRY Trends By David Koenig
Automated hardwood marketplace launches
NO MORE waiting days to find what you want and discover its delivered price. A new hardwood lumber marketplace optimizes the most timeconsuming aspects of transactions, including logistics.
A
n automated marketplace for hardwood lumber has been launched that handles the entire transaction— from sourcing, quoting, order placement, and payment processing to shipping and delivery—with the click of a button. The Mickey Marketplace offers a variety of hardwood lumber sourced directly from NHLA-certified producers harvesting logs from sustainable and renewable forest resources around the United States—giving more small and medium sized suppliers, as well as large forest product firms, access to sell their inventory directly online to purchasers. To be allowed to sell, dealers, distributors and mills must hold physical inventory at a brick-and-mortar location; however, no special software is required. Dealers and distributors can buy or sell, without special software. “There’s no fee to join, just a brief sign-up, primarily to get your location to determine shipping,” said Alex Meyers, COO of Mickey. “You can come and go as you please.” The marketplace offers live, real-time inventories, with a no-hassle, automated fulfillment process, and a complete, end-to-end purchasing solution. Since 2019, Mickey has been focused on modernizing the antiquated day-to-day operations of North American natural
16
n Building Products Digest n June 2022
resource suppliers—such as lumber sellers. Mickey’s core product, “Mickey OS,” is an operating system that quickly automates and streamlines the most cumbersome elements of the business, such as logistics, payment processing, and real-time fulfillment. “We kept hearing from suppliers that this was something they wanted as an additional lane for their e-commerce business,” said Alex Rabens, co-founder and CEO. Orders can be placed for delivery within one to 30 days depending on buyer demand and supplier availability. Expected delivery times will be around one to five days, depending on buyer and supplier proximity. Currently Mickey can only ship by truck within the continental U.S. Initially, buyers can purchase full truckloads of kiln-dried hardwood, rough or S2S in western red alder, white or black ash, basswood, beech, yellow or white birch, cherry, hard or soft or Pacific coast maple, red or white oak, walnut, hickory, sap gum, tupelo, sycamore and cottonwood. Inventory will include a variety of thicknesses from 3/4 to 16/4 and random widths and lengths. “Until now, the hardwood lumber market relied on traditional and outdated buying and selling methods,” said Meyers. “We’re giving forest product suppliers access to a national liquid marketplace and ultimately the opportunity to sell at market prices without being undercut by middlemen and wholesalers.” Mickey opted to first focus on hardwoods because it figured they would be the most difficult, making it easier to eventually expand to softwood lumber. “We started in hardwood lumber because it’s such an attribute-intensive product. There’s a lot of variance,” Meyers explained. “We’ll work our way to more commodity products.” Suppliers, such as Wisconsin’s Tigerton Lumber Co., are enthusiastic about the premise of taking their business online. “This is very exciting,” said Mike Schulke, VP of sales & marketing. “This is exactly the direction the industry needs to go!” Committed to a net-zero carbon future, Mickey’s marketplace will calculate the carbon intensity of each lumber purchase for its users in an effort to provide sustainability reporting for both parties—and eventually allow for forest product sellers to monetize the land they do not commercialize via carbon credits. Learn more at www.mickey.io. Building-Products.com
