Searching the Internet for a site that merges personal service with the camaraderie of a Saturday morning fair just got easier. Fledgling site SmoothSale.com's blend of instant messaging with traditional e-commerce techniques is well worth a visit if you're looking for a real-time online sales venue. You can post items with a fixed price and remain available to answer shoppers questions. This allows you to upsell and offer special deals in a real-time shopping environment.

SmoothSale.com http://www.smoothsale.com is the brainchild of San Francisco's Erik Arnold, 29, who began the site development last January and launched the site this past October. Early-bird promotional specials are currently running on AuctionWatch.com, Honesty.com, GoTo Auctions, ePublicEye and MyGeek with the hope of attracting customers for the 500 sellers and 15,000 items of merchandise currently online. Arnold's plan is to channel the energy of SmoothSale's 15 full time employees and 15 contractors into a unit that provides a helpful and fluid source of Internet commerce. "We're the only people focusing on real-time sales," Arnold brags, clarifying that his company's process is aimed at facilitating personal sales service through an immediate invoicing system that helps nail down a sale 30% of the time.

How does it work for buyers? When you find something you like, you can ask the seller questions and get immediate answers. The items have fixed prices, but the seller can advise you about other items she has ("upselling") or throw together a special deal for you. You can search for items you wish to buy by simply asking a question on the bulletin board or dealing directly with a particular seller. Arnold's job is to get the customers in the door, then it's up to the merchant to do the rest.

SmoothSale's home page links the viewer to a live demonstration, complete with a bona fide employee that walks you through the process. Our own foray into the demonstration proved the SmoothSale administrator to be helpful, courteous, and professional and we were delighted with what we saw. If you compare SmoothSale's technicians to the wedding cake sweetness and fluff of the eBay service staff, Arnold's employees come across as fresh, warm apple pie.

Another way of entering SmoothSale is via the green logo links found on members' Web sites and auction ads. Arnold assures us that the SmoothSale logo is acceptable to eBay.

Arnold targets Internet savvy sellers and buyers. "What we're trying to do is new," he explains. "Our service is not meant to be a source of pure haggling but one of upselling at the point of sale to keep people buying. Sometimes prices are fixed but the merchant can throw in something 1/2 price so that the buyer feels 'treated.'"

It seems the only potential hitch to SmoothSale.com for sellers is being continually online, which may pose a hardship for small retail outfits with limited personnel. Hank Paine who owns and operates Madeinct.com worried about this, citing that, as the store's only computer user, his time and attention would be stretched.

"You can shut down the SmoothSale application, it's up to the seller," Arnold answers when asked about the practicality of keeping one eye on the computer throughout the day. But, he added, the more convenient you make it for the buyer, the better the chance for a successful sale. Each SmoothSale logo contains a small message compartment that tells the viewer when a seller is online or will return. Sometimes it just promises the seller will check in from time to time.

David Newman, who owns nadalstudiostore.com, claims the benefits outweigh such minor inconveniences. "Customers like the fact that they can talk to someone." Having been online with SmoothSale for a week, he advises that it's important to learn the software for SmoothSale. "Don't be afraid to tell the customer it is new and having a clerk there really helps."

Nadal Studios has been selling on the Internet since August, augmenting sales of his Montreal and New York shops, and increasing public exposure to his limited edition figurines. Overall, he gives SmoothSale a thumbs up. Then again, he was online to ask. Other merchants featured on SmoothSale.com's homepage at the same time weren't accessible and therefore unavailable to be interviewed.

SmoothSale is free to buyers and sellers with promotions offering new customers $10 toward any initial purchase. Eventually SmoothSale may charge a small flat fee for sellers or a 2% cut of sales. [Editor's note: since Edith wrote this article for us two weeks ago, I decided to check the site, which now says "SmoothSale charges a transaction fee of two percent (2%) on all sales sold via the SmoothSale Service."]

For now, SmoothSale is content to get things up and running with the hope that this grace period builds the number of dealers and items within the system in order to override the one criticism he receives from new members. "Ebay sellers expect traffic," he readily admits. They, in fact, expect the kind of traffic eBay took years to develop, but Arnold works hard to convince the complainers that they're all in an education process and encourages them to insert the SmoothSale button on all their ads and Web sites. "The burden is on the seller to follow through."

Arnold and his crew are doing their part to make a new venue available. With a little effort on the part of the sellers and some diligence in working SmoothSale real-time sales into their daily routine, rewards are possible. Try the demo for yourself and don't be afraid to ask questions. You'll find the ingenuity of the site is matched by the genuine friendliness of the technical personnel. And if you need testimonials from other sellers, they're only a click away.

Technical Requirements: The sales process is driven by a software tool that enables live interaction coupled with an invoice-pushing system that requires 800k for windows or 1.6 MB for Macs.

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