USPN Newsweek.Com today..
FRIDAY, March 19, 1999
High-Tech Hock
It had to happen sooner or later. With the raging success of online auction sites like eBay and Yahoo, where one person's tchotchke is another's treasure, pawn shops were certain to want a piece of the action. Hock shop operator U.S. Pawn Inc. announced on Thursday plans to establish an e-commerce and online auction site where they will sell the forfeited collateral left by the company's indebted in-store customers. "We believe that the general public likes value-oriented used merchandise and we believe a pawn shop knows how to assess the value and quality of that merchandise better than anybody else," Phil Davis, U.S. Pawn's spokesman, told Newsweek.com. And unlike other online auctions that bring buyers and sellers together but don't take responsibility for the quality of the goods being sold, he added, U.S. Pawn will stand behind the products on offer.
Starting this summer, the company, which owns 13 brick-and-mortar stores in Colorado and Wyoming, will choose auction items from among the 75,000 in stock, such as jewelry, musical equipment and other collectibles. But they're not the first nor will they be the last pawnbroker to cyber-hock its wares. Texas-based industry giant First Cash Financial Services has been selling online for the last nine months, and several of the other large pawn companies tell Newsweek.com that they're putting together e-commerce plans. Much of the Internet's appeal for these companies lies in the medium's ability to attract a broader range of customers to the industry. "I think we are opening ourselves up to a whole new market," says First Cash CEO Rick Wessel, who projects that 5 to 10 percent of the company's 1999 sales will come from their Web site. "We are getting people nationwide and getting people who probably have never been in a pawnshop and would probably never go into a pawnshop." — Sandy Lawrence Edry
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