Bidsnbobs ready for take-off
A NEW online auction company, set up by three Manchester entrepreneurs with £100,000 investment, launched over the weekend.
Bidsnbobs.com holds timed auctions for products where users buy bids from the site, from 25p, and then use them to compete for items such as new ipods, TVs and laptops.
With every bid placed on an item, the price of that item drops by a penny, and the length of the auction is extended. The winner is the last person who bid on an item which has timed out.
Director Tom Beckett decided to set up the company, called Cheeryble Brothers but trading at Bidsnbobs.com, after playing around on another auction site – rivals include Swoopo and Mad Bid.
Mr Beckett said: “We looked at how their offering was set up and thought it could be improved. It seemed to be stacked in their favour; their final prices don’t include delivery for example. We looked at what people said they didn’t like on forums, and removed that stuff from our site.”
The £100,000 was privately raised by Mr Beckett and fellow directors Jon Bowler and Dave Bateson, and they expect to be able to pay that back within the first six months.
No stock is bought upfront, instead the company uses a supplier distributor, and almost all of the money has been earmarked for marketing.
Around 1,000 people have so far signed up to the site, which auctioned more than £20,000 of goods over its first weekend, and the company plans to have 10,000 users signed-up in the first month.
The trio already own Code-Sign, a web design company in Manchester’s Northern Quarter which they launched in March 2008, so had the expertise to build the website.
The directors are not worried that several new entrants have already entered this market in recent months.
“None of the others work our way. It’s unique that our bids start cheap and get cheaper still, if the bids go below zero and into credit then the winners gets the product plus the cash,” said Mr Bowler.
And they aren’t concerned that a dominant player will come in and take over the whole market, as Ebay did with traditional auction sites.
“Ebay has lots of people selling their own tat. Ours is more like a Dixons. It’s combining an auction with online shopping,” said Mr Beckett.
