Beyond the Bids: Building the most liquid marketplace in the world

There’s a question that drives how Adam Lawrence, VP of Marketplace Growth, and his team at Ritchie Bros. think about the business every day. Not “how much equipment can we sell?” but something more ambitious: can we build the most liquid marketplace for any asset in the world?

That shift in mindset, from volume to liquidity, is what separates a transactional auction company from a true marketplace. And it shapes everything from how assets are marketed to how buyers are engaged to how sellers choose their path to market.

What a liquid equipment marketplace means

In a truly liquid marketplace, a seller can find enough qualified buyers to get the right price, and a buyer can find enough supply to locate exactly what they need. Both sides of the equation have to grow together. Pull one without the other and the whole thing breaks down.

That’s the work Adam’s Marketplace Growth team focuses on: raising both sides simultaneously, building consistency for buyers and sellers alike, and making the platform reliable enough that people return to it. Or in some cases, across generations.

“If you go to one of our big auction events, you’ll see a father walking around with his six-year-old son,” Adam said. Multi-generational relationships aren’t a nostalgic footnote. They’re evidence that the platform delivers results reliably enough that people keep coming back and bring others with them.

Local presence, global demand

Old-school auctions had a fundamental constraint: you were limited to whoever showed up. Local market, local buyers, local results.

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Ritchie Bros. operates differently. With sales teams, yards, and facilities in more than 60 locations around the world, the local presence is real — relationships are built inside farming communities, construction communities, and towns. But the demand side isn’t local. It’s global. A seller in the Midwest isn’t competing for the attention of whoever happens to drive past. Their assets go in front of a worldwide buyer base.

For specialized equipment in particular, that reach changes the outcome. The right buyer for a specific piece of machinery might not be in the same region — or even the same country — as the seller. Bringing global demand to every transaction is what makes the difference between a fair price and the right price.

The right format for every situation

Ritchie Bros. runs more than 400 auction events annually, but the auction itself is just one option. The platform is built around a straightforward question: what does this seller actually need?

Need fast liquidity? A Guaranteed Selling Option puts a check in hand immediately. Ready to go to market but want the competitive energy of an auction? The next event is likely just weeks away. Trying to maximize price realization and willing to wait? Marketplace options let sellers set a price and accept Buy Now or Make Offer bids on their terms.

The goal is to match the solution to the situation — not to fit every seller into the same box.

The shift to digital

Since COVID, the business has moved almost entirely online. That’s not just a logistical shift — it’s a fundamental change in who can participate. Buyers no longer need to clear a full day to attend an auction. They’re bidding from their phones while driving between job sites, monitoring watchlists between meetings, and transacting throughout their day.

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Digital convenience expands the buyer pool. A wider buyer pool means more competition for individual assets. More competition means better outcomes for sellers. The logic compounds in one direction.

Every asset matters

One concern that surfaces occasionally from sellers is whether their equipment will get lost in a platform moving hundreds of thousands of assets a year. Adam’s answer is direct: that’s something the team watches closely, on an asset-by-asset basis.

The process starts weeks, sometimes months, before an auction. Page views, photo views, watchlists, registered bidder counts: all of it is monitored, and marketing is adjusted behind the scenes to drive results for individual lots. The thinking is straightforward. A great result on this asset and this asset and this asset adds up to a great event. The big number only gets bigger by getting the small numbers right.

What’s coming in 2027

Looking ahead, a few shifts are worth watching. The industry is becoming more data-driven on both sides. Sellers have better tools than ever to identify the right time to dispose of an asset — analyzing maintenance cost curves, fleet utilization, and timing the market more precisely. Buyers have similar tools for evaluating what to buy and what to pay for it.

Beyond data, Ritchie Bros. is focused on building out the full transaction experience: financing options that fit different needs, logistics support to get purchased equipment delivered, and a unified platform that ties those services together under one team, one set of relationships, and one consistent experience at the local level.

The foundation, as Adam put it, is the same one Dave Ritchie built 65 years ago — a handshake and a commitment to deliver. What’s changed is the scale at which that commitment can now be kept.

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Beyond the Bids is a series offering an inside look at the Ritchie Bros. marketplace — featuring perspectives from the people who know it best.

See previous episodes of Beyond the Bids.

See also

Trust is the currency of the used equipment market — and the numbers prove it