Rick Fine, an Alabamian with a background in the metals industry, says now could be the right time for scrap recyclers to consider non-traditional funding and capital sources, and he has a sleeping donkey that can help.
Fine created www.SleepingDonkey.com to act as a bulletin board and virtual marketplace for companies and individuals who have an underutilized asset or may have insufficient capital to make a major investment (the sleeping donkeys for whom the site is named).
On the Web site, Fine offers the following example:
“For example, if I want to build a recycling plant and I need forklifts, trucks, a furnace, real estate, and perhaps some engineering expertise as my primary components to build that business, I could post what I needed on SleepingDonkey.com to find them. People can then respond to my postings on the Web site. For example, if someone can provide real estate, I can make a deal where they receive partial ownership in the plant in exchange for their property, illustrating how one piece of the puzzle is put in place for the creation of a new business.”
According to Fine, new businesses as well as existing businesses seeking to increase their cash flow or access new equity or capital investment funding can benefit from the SleepingDonkey.com model. Posting to the site is free, he notes.
He says he conceived of the Web site almost 10 years ago, but has waited to launch the concept. Now, says Fine, a greater number of people (recyclers in particular) are more comfortable doing business on the Web than they were then. “They can understand it and appreciate it better,” he comments.
Web familiarity is one reason Fine hopes his Sleeping Donkey will garner more attention this year, but the state of financial markets is another. The tight credit markets “demand creative solutions,” says Fine. “Sleeping Donkey.com is being launched into an economy where credit is extremely difficult to obtain to start up a new business as well as expand on a current business.”
He adds that the scope of a transaction “is whatever a user wants.” It could range from a large equity stake in a $100 million business to an arrangement to use a piece of equipment worth $25,000 to obtain a fractional stake in a smaller company.
More information on the company and its concept can be found at the site itself, www.SleepingDonkey.com.
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