Price comparison website in liquidation
A COMPARISON site which matches motorists who need car maintenance with garages is up for sale, having gone into liquidation.
Dipstix Limited, based in Manchester, was an online aggregator of more than 1,100 independent garages nationwide before going into liquidation in April.
The Dipstix website provided comparisons based on price of maintenance work, ratings and reviews as well as distance to garages.
It attracted around 18,000 unique views a month, of which 4,000 would turn into enquiries and it had succeeded in attracting circa 10,000 customers since launch in 2013. In 2014, it raised £600,000 in a crowd funding campaign.
Nat Baldwin of Metis Partners, who is co-ordinating the marketing drive for the Dipstix assets, said: “Dipstix was among the pioneers in providing maintenance information to motorists and matching them to independent garages who were keen to carry out the work.”
She added: “Dipstix’s revenue generation strategies included charging garages sign-on fees and collecting a percentage of the booking fee, as well as working with garages to offer additional services and products that could be sold on to clients.”
Assets linked to the intellectual property asset portfolio include: a fully developed software platform with software development documentation; customer and garage databases; goodwill in the Dipstix brand; branded domain names and website content; and unregistered trademarks.
Metis said it expects the business to be of interest to those operating in car maintenance comparison sites; online aggregators; car e-commerce; comparison websites; and location-based services.
The deadline for offers is noon on Thursday July 14, 2016 – all offers should be submitted directly to Metis Partners.
