Ever gone to eBay in search of something — an iPod, say — and had to comb through an endless array of half-literate, confusing and possibly inaccurate listings?
Or perhaps you’re a seller on eBay, and angry at its policies?
Either way, Wigix, the “Want it, got it Xchange,” hopes you’re annoyed enough to switch. The company, which launches today, offers an online marketplace modeled on stock exchanges, aimed at reducing inefficiences.
When an item is listed on Wigix, the seller won’t need to go through the task of describing it and posting pictures. Instead, they find the item in Wigix’s database, select it, and choose a price, with an eye to the average price.
Buyers, likewise, need only find the item they’re looking for through a single search on Wigix. Once they’re on the page for that item, they can see last prices it sold at, how many buyers and sellers there are, descriptions, reviews and more. If they want to buy it, they put in a bid price; when a seller meets the price, the transaction will be made.
The product pages are to be vetted by “category experts” who will take a tiny percentage of sales for their efforts, while sales fees have a set rate: Zero fees for items under $25, a fee of $1.50 each for the buyer and seller for items up to $100, a 2 percent fee to the seller for $100 - $1,000, and a one percent fee for every dollar over $1,000. Those prices are calculatedly much lower than eBay’s seller fees, and there is no listing fee at all, nor do listings expire.
As you buy items they’ll be automatically listed on your “portfolio”, or you can manually add those you already own. You’ll be able to see your portfolio change in price over time, just like a stock portfolio, and can choose to sell items anytime, or receive notifications of sudden price shifts (in case your dingy old pair of Converse suddenly acquire cult appeal).
The two founders that I met, former Charles Schwab traders James Chong and Bob Lee, have plenty of additional ideas for how to monetize and run the site — more than I can fit here. What’s perhaps more interesting is an anecdote they had to pass on about Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, which has $5.34 million invested in the company.
While I’d assumed a million eBay competitors must have been launched over the years, Lee said their initial pitch to DFJ for funding immediately got the attention of Draper, who said that out of the many thousands of pitches he’d received over the years, only three had been for competitors to eBay. Along with the investment, he joined the board of the company.
When I tried for myself to think of eBay competitors the only that immediately came to mind was Etsy, which has created a successful market for unique, hand-made items, many of which would have otherwise ended up on eBay. In a sense, what Wigix wants to do — become the marketplace for standard, mass-produced items — covers the other half of that equation. And yes, eBay irritates me enough to switch.
Wigix is based in San Francisco, and was founded in March 2007.
16 Comments
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dave mcclure said:
hmm. seems like old half.com model slightly re-tooled, plus maybe some SEO as a new twist?
plenty of innovation & opportunity there, but still challenging to get critical mass of buyers. if they can get over that issue, then maybe it gets some legs.
like the idea of pre-defined items tho. odd that more folks didn’t copy that model after half.com did it.
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Jeffrey McManus said:
And of course eBay has had the auto-listing feature for items in certain categories (like DVDs) for years.
The problem is that you can only take this feature so far. Good luck trying to apply it to product categories like jewelry or handmade items.
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Q dub said:
Only problem I see with this ’standardize and securitize’ idea is that many items on Ebay are slight variations of the shelf product. E.g. “Here’s my 1 yr old ipod, minor scratch on the top left, and I’m going to throw in a Belkin radio just for kicks.” So it gets difficult to build a bid-ask system around these mainstream, yet varied products.
But then again, many eBay power sellers carry exact off-the-shelf products, so there’s definitely a sizable opportunity here.
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Uri Moszkowicz said:
This company has great potential and is precisely the type of company that I’d envisioned as an ebay killer!
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iSphere said:
How is this different from Amazon letting people sell their stuff? Probably less fees but also less buyers and sellers.
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sciencefare said:
The site looks promising, and I registered. However, I hit a very troublesome roadblock in the verification process.
The site asks for your PayPal account information, email address and PASSWORD! The site also wants your eBay member ID and PASSWORD!
This coming from a new site that has no trust built up. Additionally, NONE of the pages are secure. Not registration, not login, nothing. NO security, no encryption.
So, at least until I hear that SSL is implemented, I won’t be going back. The request for my PayPal and eBay passwords is the most disturbing part. Do the folks that run this site actually believe that the masses will entrust this sensitive data to them?
I will not.
-sciencefare
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Bill Burnham said:
Just a preface: I am an investor in Wigix so take whatever I say with a bog grain of salt. I think what really differentiates Wigix from some of the models cited about are the community and user generated content features. There’s a lot to do on Wigix other than trading and same can not be said for other sites. Personally, I think that the portfolio tracking and community features will likely get more traction than trading at first due to liquidity issues, however since there’s no cost to listing items on Wigix we hope to see people use it as a no-cost way to at least keep EBay honest and their options open. As to the security concerns expressed by the last poster, rest assured Wigix does in fact use SSL encryption for personal data. The EBay/Paypal information is totally voluntary and not required to register. It will be used (ironically) in an as yet unreleased feature that should result in dramatically better trust and safety than you can currently get on other sites.
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trans9net said:
In any online transaction the method of authentication and level of trust is of utmost importance and if you can’t guaranttee that then your aim of convenience is defeated.
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sciencefare said:
@ Bill Burnham above:
You stated “As to the security concerns expressed by the last poster, rest assured Wigix does in fact use SSL encryption for personal data.”
Well Bill, I can not “rest assured”, because at no point is SSL invoked. There is no security, there is no encryption, there is no “https://” at all.
If Wigix does in fact use SSL, why is it not apparent Bill? Why does it appear that the site DOES NOT use SSL?
-sciencefare
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David Kaspar said:
I don’t see any SSL (https) either:
form action=”http://www.wigix.com/index.php/login/index” method=”post”
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CONAN OBRIEN said:
Front page could use some work. I have a hard time taking a site seriously that uses generic stock photography on it’s main page.
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sciencefare said:
In email exchanges with Bill Burnham who has posted above, I have learned that Wigix has now implemented SSL for the registration portion of the site.
I have checked this, and found that registration at Wigix IS now secure.
Mr. Burnham has indicated that further changes are forthcoming.
-sciencefare
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Patricia said:
I just registered and was only required to put in the email address I use on paypal….no other paypal information was required.
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Mikey said:
good luck to them
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Brandon said:
Is Wigix listed on the stock market anywhere , maybe by a parent company?
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Meghan said:
I came across this new auction site (www.yasfa.com) recently and was intrigued by the concept, a combination of online auction, social networking and charity. Looks like they built the site around ad revenue, since they don’t collect fees for themselves. They do collect referral fees to give back to their members.
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Wigix Keeping Fees at Bay | Tony Wheeler Live! said:
[...] pay a dime. Wigix is certainly not the only venue to take aim at eBay’s fee structure. VentureBeat has a great write up about the fees that are involved in Wigix as well as an in-depth discussion [...]