New Zealand Vintage Computer Forums

Almost a thread for general, but since it's about trademe ...
http://home.nzcity.co.nz/news/article.a ... fm=psp,nwl

As one of them trademe members with 500+ trades, I got an email with a preferential shares offer.

What are all your thoughts. 20% gain to be had, or already at market saturation? Let's see :

Share increase = Increased profits = raising fees/commissions = unhappy buyers/sellers = BAD
or
Share increase = keen mom + pop investors looking to spend
or
Wise investment = don't put shares on the mortgage (because that's where the computer collection is)

Fairfax took a massive cash dividend from Trademe prior to the IPO. So they've taken their pound of flesh.

The question I'd ask is where is the long term growth? Australia? Can they displace EBay in that market?

I doubt they'd displace e-bay, there's too much momentum.
Back in 2000 I was working for a company called bidorbuy which was expanding into Australia from South Africa.
I said at the time "You should also launch in New Zealand, it wouldn't cost any more than Australia only".
My boss told me there was no money in New Zealand and it's not worth it.

700 million dollars later....

what one has to ask is how long before E Bay really gets involved and takes on Trade Me with specials to take away the Trade Me lead, I notice they now have a E Bay NZ on line, and for international sellers this will give them the edge over Trade Me as stated in another thread, some of the computers in the vintage scene make big money overseas, but not here. ( and as Trade Me put up its costs to list , how long before we may as well use the E Vil Bay

Fairfax have done their corp raid, so are they just spitting out the bones before the collapse

And will ebay not be dicks about vintage computers with foreign power supplies.

matsondawson wrote:And will ebay not be dicks about vintage computers with foreign power supplies.

It may not be them though Matt. Perhaps it's the law that's an ass here? Maybe they are just forced to comply?

Certainly on-line auction competitiors successfully moving in on encumbents are not unheard of. Look at Craiglist is the USA. It seems popular now. Usually for that to happen though the established one has to annoy a lot of people first and the alternative has to offer something new or better. From what I can see TradeMe is certainly simplier and better than e-bay in regard to many of their policies, especially for the seller.

You never know when things might change though.