Mark Smith
Your excess inventory is other companies’ shortages. MOQller is a collaborative marketplace for electronics components. We enable companies to collaborate with their peers to streamline their inventory, prevent excess, and locate hard-to-find materials.
Our Vision. Your Goal. Excess Inventory is zero.
Tell us about yourself?
In 2009, Ivan worked as a Program Manager for an EMS company in Silicon Valley. One late summer day, Ivan concluded a meeting with a customer to discuss payment collection for their E & O inventory.
The customer refused to pay and attempted to place blame on Ivan’s company. Unfortunately, this story was typical in the business.
During that same week, other PMs in Ivan’s company reported similar experiences. Ivan’s Director then pushed the team to take action on the growing problem of E & O, even so far as to sell them on EBay.
On his way home that evening, Ivan reflected on this prevalent dilemma plaguing the industry which matched his personal experiences at previous companies.
He began research into the problem, gathering data and comparing notes with colleagues in the industry to formulate solutions for better inventory management and customer relationships. In his research, Ivan discovered that:
“50 million tons of e-waste are produced each year, and left unchecked this could more than double to 120 million tons by 2050.”
– World Economic Forum
In 2018, Ivan formed MOQller to solve these inventory pain points, effectively targeted to drive towards a more sustainable future where inventory excess and shortages are managed effortlessly. His vision is aligned with your goals to prevent excess, lower costs, and protect the environment.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
Develop and launch the platform with basic functions as soon as possible.
What problem does your business solve?
The excess electronics materials inventory that companies are scrapping every year. The amount of time people wasted trying to find a solution when there are supply chain disruptions.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
Companies are stucked in a cycle – buying materials at minimum order quantity, building, and shipping products, storing excess in a warehouse, and scrapping/liquidation of excess inventory at a later time.
What is your magic sauce?
Our data transparency and price visibility enable our customers to get the highest recovery costs on their excess inventory.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
Our vision is to connect companies in a network and use AI to detect disruptions in the company supply chain in real-time to help them address their inventory issues.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
Mindset. Manufacturing companies are the slowest to adopt new technology and solutions. Companies see us as another broker. Their excess inventory is too old (5 years or more) and we cannot sell them.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
Companies do meet monthly internally to talk about their excess inventory. We want them to treat recovery of excess inventory costs as part of revenue meetings. Also, we want to build trust so we can connect directly to their inventory management system. This way we can pull real-time data.
