Online auction site Bidville went through a major restructuring in September, and now the site is better than ever, said its spokesperson. Kim Cullen said the auction site "reorganized and restructured" in September. That's when President and CEO Michael Palandro resigned and the site temporarily suspended all billing processes (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y05/m09/i27/s01).
Cullen said the company went from 12 employees down to 3 employees. "There were too many bodies that we didn't really need," she said. Tasks have now been automated and Cullen said, "things get done better and more efficiently" since the reorganization.
Cullen could not comment on Palandro's departure on September 21 other than to say he resigned. She said during the reorganization, no one knew what was going to happen, so the company suspended billing for one billing period, and was resumed thereafter.
In the 4 months since the reorganization, Cullen said they have revamped both the back-end and front-end to make the site more friendly for buyers and sellers. "The focus has been on adding more features," she said. Bidville introduced a VIP program and a Safe program that, according to Cullen, cuts down significantly on the fraud that typically affects online auction sites.
All new sellers must join the VIP program that requires a verification-by-phone process. Existing sellers have the option of becoming VIP verified, she said.
The Safe program allows Bidville sellers to put limits on who can and cannot bid on their items. Filters can be placed according to geography, number of feedback ratings, amount of time registered on the site, and according to whether the buyer has a credit card on file. Sellers can also require bidders on their auctions be pre-approved.
There are 1700 VIP members and 900 sellers with Safe settings.
Cullen said that in the past, Bidville wasn't up to the task when eBay made mistakes and there was an influx of users to the site. She said she is confident now that Bidville can handle an influx of sellers and can support a surge of traffic.
In the next two weeks, Bidville will launch the first installment of a checkout system. First, Store items will be integrated with Checkout, which is powered by PayPal, then the Take It items (Take It is similar to eBay's Buy It Now feature) will be integrated with Checkout, and alternative payment methods will be added.
Cullen said that in addition to uploading Take It and Storefront items to Google's Froogle service, Bidville uploads 100,000 items from Stores to Google Base.
Cullen said, "We've done more in the last three months than in the last year."
According to the Bidville website, "Bidville was founded in 1999 as an online auction alternative to eBay. In August 2003, Bidville was acquired by Royal Palm Capital Group. In December 2003 Bidville became a publicly traded company on the OTCBB, symbol BVLE." Cullen said the site is still a publicly traded company. SEC filings ended September 30, 2005 showed the service was experiencing continued losses and was pursuing financing for its operations and seeking additional investments (http://www.sec.gov).
