Bidville does not fit in with its parent company's strategy, according to uBid.com Holdings CEO Jeffrey Hoffman, who said he is considering various options, including the possibility of selling the Bidville site. The auction site was conspicuously absent from last week's press release outlining uBid's new strategy, so AuctionBytes sat down with Hoffman to learn more about plans for the C2C auction site.
"As a public company, part of what our shareholders want us to do is to find positions where we can be in industry leader, and of course, Bidville is in a market space where there's an 800-pound, 8000-pound, gorilla already in the space. So it's a little more difficult for me to justify spending public funds in a public company continuing to develop a site that I can't claim will ever particularly be a leader."
Hoffman, who joined uBid late last year, said he has to decide if Bidville fits in with the overall business strategy of uBid, and said he'll be making the decision "in weeks, not months."
"The best solution for everybody, I believe, would be if there is an interested party that's better equipped than we are to operate the business and would be interested in acquiring the business. We want to give that community of buyers and sellers the chance to continue without disruption in their marketplace. If we were able to sell the business to someone that was better fit to run it, I think that would be a win for everybody."
Hoffman said he'd be looking for a sincere interest and expertise in the C2C market and an appetite for investment to grow the business as two primary factors when considering a potential acquirer.
When asked if he would consider eBay, Hoffman said he would. "Obviously it's a growth extension of the business they are already in, and they certainly understand that space."
Asked if he would consider Bidville sellers if they were interested in running the auction site themselves, Hoffman said he would. "If people would be interested in having that discussion, we're certainly here, easy to reach, and would be able to advise people on what we think the commitment would be to continue running the business."
Bidville was founded in 1999 primarily as a sport card auction site, and in 2001, it merged with NoBidding.com. In August 2003, Royal Palm Capital Group acquired the site, and uBid acquired Bidville in July 2006.
uBid announced last week it was launching a fixed-price marketplace called uBuy. Hoffman said sellers in the Bidville space that fit the profile for selling in the uBid auction or on the uBuy fixed-price site are "more than welcome any time."
Hoffman also talked about why uBid is launching uBuy and a new "software as a service" ASP channel called uSaaS. The full interview can be heard on Ecommerce Industry SoundBytes on the AuctionBytes website (http://podcast.auctionbytes.com).
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