Telebid founded three years ago in Germany and launch in the UK last December. The site mixes the convenience of online shopping with the excitement of that eBay experience, says UK country manager Nigel Whiteoak.
Backed by Wellington Partners, Telebid has offices in London and Munich and employs 36 staff in total. Whiteoak explains how it works and how the company plans to grow.
Nigel Whiteoak, Telebid's UK country manager and vice president of marketing
• Explain your business to my Mum.
"Have fun competing with other bidders whilst trying to win a brand new Dyson for £19 or a Nintendo Wii for £14."
• How do you make money?
"We charge 50p for every bid placed, even if it's not a winning bid. We use this money to subsidise the losses we make selling at such low prices. Sometimes we get enough bids to make a profit, sometimes we don't - our job is to try to balance it out to make it fun for people without losing money overall."
• What's your background?
"After selling pork pies at Tesco's and teaching rock-climbing in the Lake District, I ended up working in business-to-business e-commerce for seven years at a company called RS Components selling everything from microchips to screwdrivers. I moved to eBay in 2005, first as part of the marketing team and then looking after sellers. I fancied an entrepreneurial challenge, so joined TeleBid last year to get the UK business up-and-running."
• How many users do you have now, and what's your target within 12 months?
"We have over 600,000 registered users now - hopefully lots more by the end of the year as we continue to grow internationally."
• How are personalisation and recommendation part of your business?
"We've not yet built much of this stuff into the site, but have used Facebook to build up a nice little fan base and bring new bidders on board."
• Any weird business experiences so far?
"The 64-year-old Scottish woman who appeared at the door of our German offices when I was there last week. She told me it was her first time in Germany, that she spoke no German and was an artist and poet. She asked to wander round our offices soaking up the experience, because these days she "lives in the present". Apparently she picked our 3rd floor offices in a Munich suburb as she was staying in a nearby hotel. I didn't really know what to say."
• What's your biggest challenge?
"Internationalising the business quickly. After launching in the UK in December, we've just launched in Spain and plan more countries later this year. As our business has a real as well as a virtual part, each new country adds complexity and takes time to set-up. And managing the volume and selection of products that we have on auction isn't as easy as you might think."
• Name your closest competitors.
"There's no-one doing quite what we're doing, but probably the nearest equivalents are companies offering lowest-priced unique-bid auctions such as AuctionAir. They also sell at low prices and charge for each bid placed. It's worth saying that TeleBid is really nothing like eBay - everything is brand new, we arrange the delivery and handle all customer queries and the auctions work completely differently."
• Are we in the middle of a new dot com bubble?
"I don't think so. Everything feels a lot more grounded than it did in 2000 and most of the ideas out there have an idea of how they're planning to make money. You can't imagine boo.com happening again, can you?"
• Which tech businesses or web thinkers are the ones to watch?
"I worship at the font of Seth Godin. His blog continues to be a brilliant read, with no fluff. I'm a self-confessed Mac-head, and think Apple are actually doing some of the most interesting things in tech right now. Jobs' obsession with the user experience will, I think, continue to reap dividends as they carefully expand into more products and services. I can't wait for the 3G iPhone - look out for me in the queue.
• Where do you want the company to be in five years?
Global, on more channels, with a bigger product range and probably a bigger variety of types of auction. That would be a nice start!
• Is there room for this kind of site in the online retail space?
• How can they make the site standout in a market so dominated by eBay?
• And would you use it?
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