VentureBeat

Poor eBay hasn’t had much luck lately. Even as its PayPal arm has done fairly well, the auction business that it’s known for has suffered, leading to a smoldering rebellion among sellers and a recent 10 percent work force cut. A new rival called Wigix wants to capitalize on those troubles, with a newly added feature intended to steal sellers directly away from eBay.

Wigix emerged in April offering standardized listings for common items and lower fees than eBay, which they openly compare themselves to. However, the site didn’t focus immediately on bringing in as many auctions as possible. Because it essentially has an online catalog of common items like electronics and cars, it first had to work on filling out its listings. With the help of 400 “category experts” who hope to make a tiny cut of sales, the site now has 1.5 million listing pages.

Its next big step is “Storefronts,” a way for power sellers, who have many items to sell and often make a living from online sales, to set up a virtual store listing all their items. Because listings for mass-produced items like popular DVDs or cell phones already exist, it’s fast and easy for sellers to create their store. Wigix also provides tools to track inventory and, perhaps most importantly, directly migrate listings on eBay, further cutting down the barrier to switching.

In a way, the early strategy Wigix has adopted is almost the opposite of what eBay is doing right now. The focus at eBay seems to be on satisfying buyers — to the detriment of sellers, who have had to deal with cumbersome rules and raised fees. Wigix, in response, is working hard to satisfy sellers’ complaints, and even its slogan is a direct dig at eBay: “Keeping Fees at Bay.”

That’s probably a smart strategy, because without listings, buyers will never arrive. If Wigix does manage to pull in a significant number of sellers, prices for common items will drop due to competition, and buyers will begin to take an interest in the site. Of course, luring either buyers or sellers is a chicken-and-egg problem, which is why the company is working so hard on making the site as easy to use — and switch to — as possible.

There’s also one more notable prong in Wigix’s strategy: search engine optimization. Because its listings are structured and standardized, and include a decent amount of useful information, they’re starting to show up high in Google searches. So people doing product research may well begin stumbling across the site, and potentially becoming clients.

Look out a few months from now to see whether the company is having any success. For now, it only has about 12,000 registered users, according to chief executive James Chong, and not many item sales. Of course, the company also has a potential recession to worry about, but that might turn into an asset, allowing the venture-funded outfit to slowly build awareness, sneaking in under eBay’s radar and coming out of the downturn as a strong rival.

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.