Portals
The use of portals for purchasing
goods and services can be particularly attractive to small business.
In some cases these portals have been assembled to enable heavier discounts
to be applied to goods, as a result of pooling the leverage of a number
of customers. Such portals are commonly organised by trade groups, associations,
trade magazines or commercial distribution organisations.
Some
examples: for professional services 4C
associates , for agriculture Global
Farmers, for office equipment Euroffice,
or for gas & electricity: eEnergy.
You can locate portals relevant
to your business by using Yahoo
or Google, search on "portal"
and "your interest" For example: truck portal, machine tool
portal etc.
There are also specialist
purchasing websites that seek to match buyer and supplier, and facilitate
online transactions. Useful for more industrial scale purchasing, or
more complex deals. Check out: Buy and Supply.
At the other end of the purchasing
spectrum, are the auctions. Trade auctions are well known as a source
of cheap equipment. 
Although
aimed largely at the consumer, you can find some useful second hand
equipment: copiers, computers, etc at online auction sites such as:eBay
