BooCoo.com launched on Monday with a unique model – it has entered into exclusive deals with over 280 newspapers around the country that will advertise the new auction site in return for a cut of the revenue. eBay and Craigslist have siphoned away business from newspaper classifieds for more than a decade but have never successfully come together online to leverage their strength in local advertising.
George Willard Sr., Chairman and CEO of Ranger Data Technologies, which operates BooCoo, has figured out an approach he thinks will work. His national auction site licenses zip codes to newspapers on an exclusive basis. For example, in the Boston market, the Boston Herald newspaper has paid for an exclusive license for Boston zip codes and must commit to running a certain percentage of advertising that drives visitors to BooCoo.com: 1.5 – 2.5 percent of online ad impressions, and five pages of print advertising/month.
In return, any time a buyer or seller from a Boston zip code enters into a transaction, the Boston Herald gets a cut. BooCoo splits the revenue three ways: the paper where the buyer is based, the paper where the seller is based, and BooCoo, all get a share of the transaction fees. If the buyer and seller are both from the same zip code, the newspaper gets two of the three shares.
Visitors who come to BooCoo see local auctions followed by national listings on the front page. When they search for an item, they see all listings sorted by time ending soonest (the way eBay used to serve up search results until it made “Best Match” the default sort order).
When browsing a category – books, for example – a visitor currently sees all book listings with no way to drill down by subcategory. Willard said as the inventory levels increase, BooCoo will add refinements.
BooCoo charges sellers listing and commission fees, which are waived during the initial launch period. Willard said he is doing things differently than other sites like eBay. All buyers and sellers must register, and in the future will be required to register with a credit card. Users are limited to one account. Feedback will be held for 14 days and will be published simultaneously. If a user wants to change their feedback, they will go through the BooCoo’s help desk.
Another unique feature is how BooCoo handles Reserve Pricing. If you bid on an item and don’t meet the reserve price, BooCoo will notify you via email – and will include the reserve price information.
Willard says he plans to separate auctions and fixed-price listings. He has been in newspapers since 1966 and has held every job in the newspaper business except accounting, he said. He owned a chain of weekly newspapers in Michigan in the 1990s. He said he has used eBay since 1999 and has been thinking about the model for BooCoo since 2002.
He hired Kip Knight, a former Vice-President of Marketing for eBay North America, to consult with Ranger Data Technologies. “Boocoo’s emphasis on local services is smart because it is a large and growing part of ecommerce,” Knight said in a press statement. Soon after this week’s launch, Boocoo will also offer local companies the opportunity to bid on jobs placed by consumers and businesses in the community. Service providers such as painters, carpenters and landscapers will be able to respond to proposals from local consumers and businesses that have placed a “request for quote” on Boocoo for the service they need.
June 22, 2010
source: auctionbytes.com