With eBay.com attracting more business buyers, Atlas Resell Management has used that traffic to build a niche selling used dental chairs and refurbished equipment for dentistry offices.

EBay wasn’t always so attractive to business buyers, but in recent years it has developed far beyond a bazaar-type site for consumers seeking general merchandise, trinkets and collectibles to a marketplace where businesses buy what they need to run their operations, says Mason Fuller, founder and CEO of Atlas.

“The comfort level with enterprise-level shoppers is such that it’s become mainstream,” says Fuller, who started Atlas to sell used and refurbished business equipment on eBay.com when he left college 12 year ago. He has since focused his business on buying and selling dental equipment.

“It’s been a great partnership over the years,” he says. More buyers than in the past are going to eBay to find business and industrial goods, as eBay has evolved from being a collectables and retail-oriented, consumer-oriented marketplace to really kind of a behemoth in the business-and-industrial space,” he says.

Fuller says Atlas Resell Management, based in Boise, Idaho, has also been testing sales on Amazon.com for three or four years and is now experimenting with expanding sales on the Amazon Business marketplace. But he’s not yet convinced that the structure or the types of sales that are done on Amazon are right for his business.

That’s because Atlas sells many unique dental chairs and other items in small quantities, without offering the ability to order in bulk as many Amazon buyers may prefer, Fuller says. Instead, Atlas uses Amazon for some of its products to test how they sell. “We sell a little bit on Amazon just experimentally,” he says, “we don’t have a depth of SKUs, because every dental chair is a little bit different,” he adds.

Fuller says that some of his refurbished equipment may sell better on Amazon, an option Atlas is considering. Still, he says he’s wary of the higher fees Amazon charges as well as Amazon’s reputation for competing with its third-party marketplace sellers as a direct seller itself.

Fuller’s Atlas Resell Management now carries 1,500 to 1,600 pieces of refurbished dental equipment on its eBay store. After acquiring used dental office equipment from sources throughout the United States, Atlas refurbishes items with a team of five technicians. About 20% of his company’s sales are international.

The advantages of selling on e-marketplaces “are just the scalability of communication and marketing power,” Fuller says. “It’s the search ability of it. We sell such a niche product, and we need a very wide audience. But to the audience that is interested in what we provide, it’s revolutionary for them to have access to a wide selection of used equipment.”

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Phil Burgert is a Pittsburg, Kan.-based freelance writer.