Wheedle.co.nz: experiences, comments

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#692872 28-Sep-2012 12:55

We already have sella.co.nz as an alternative to Trade Me. How many alternatives do we need? Good luck to them, I'll be amazed if they succeed. They'll have to come up with something quite unique to attract Trade Me users. I suspect that anyone who buys and sells online is already using Trade Me.

New customers for Wheedle? Oh, I almost forgot - all those who have been banned from Trade Me will no doubt use Wheedle until they upset them too.

rubygirl

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#692876 28-Sep-2012 13:05

Well, I personally would switch from TradeMe if something cheaper AND better came along. I dislike the limited search capability and TradeMe raising their fees is just plain greedy. They could easily get more money by improving existing functionality and implementing additional innovations.

So, I am going to be looking at Wheedle to see how it does but so far the signs are not looking good.

What Wheedle does having going for it is:
(1) From reading the TradeMe forums it is clear that thei users are a little bit annoyed at the fee increases being rolled out on Monday. If Wheedle catches this wave, then that will give them the much needed boost to launch themselves with.

(2) Like any marketplace, the TradeMe community don't like being forced to deal with a monopoly - we all like to think we have some choice. For this reason a lot of people will want to see Wheedle succeed.

(3) Wheedle has the dollars to do it better by taking TradeMe's good ideas and adding their own. Curiosity, if nothing else, will send TradeMe users over to Wheedle for a peek.

(4) Wheedle has the finance to not need to make any money until two months after its launch - long enough for a lot of TradeMe users to give it a go with no risk.

What Wheedle does NOT have going for it:
(1) A chunk of the software has been developed in India - it seems they have tried to do it on the cheap from the get go. While Indian programmers are going to be effective in some instances, they will program like the drones they are paid to be. They will not foresee problems, come up with innovative work arounds or give insightful feedback about better ways of implementing the ideas. That's just not the way they do things over there. Worse case scenario is that they will churn out rubbish before anyone has the sense to check up on what is being delivered.

(2) I haven't even had a chance to see the site yet - it was down yesterday when I tried for the first time. This smacks suspiciously of system overload after all the press exposure. This indicates that the underlying architecture could be a little on the shaky side.

(3) The site being down means that all the people being driven there by the press releases are not going to be registering and they may never return. Wheedle is missing a major opportunity to catch the critical wave for its big launch. These people may never bother to return, especially if Wheedle already reeks of failure.

(4) One of the big downsides of moving from TradeMe is that users will not be able to use there TradeMe feedback rating. There are several ways this can be verified and transferred to Wheedle - the ability to do this would be critical to Wheedle's success. I can only hope this has been set up already but I suspect not - what could have been a major incentive will become a major disincentive.

(5) The Wheedle site does not even have a Favicon! I haven't looked at any of the source behind the site but I would think this is a very bad sign from the get-go.

My overall opinion is that Wheedle is already behind on capturing the TradeMe fee increase god-send sent their way. By not being prepared, they will end up as just one of the many also-rans ... sadly.

However, if Wheedle wants to employ me as a consultant, I am available and open to offers - short term only ;-) Umm, seriously, as I am currently looking for a consultancy contract thus I have had the time to write this longer than usual missive.

crackrdbycracku

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#692878 28-Sep-2012 13:09

DonGould:

I agree with the suggestion that it's going to take more than $300m to take on a $1.5b dollar business, and come out alive, if they're going to take on the whole business space of TradeMe and do it by trading on the benefit of simply being cheaper.

D

There is one company who I would back to successfully take on TradeMe and that is eBay if they ever bother to really have a go. They have a lot more than $300m to throw at it and could offer an international reach, particularly if they teamed up with NZ Post to make it easy to use ShipTo. But I doubt they would be interested in a market as small as NZ.

Other than that, good luck.

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rubygirl

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#692963 28-Sep-2012 15:23

The Wheedle site does not even have a Favicon!

Ok, I was wrong there! It does seem to have one now.

freitasm

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#692971 28-Sep-2012 15:39

crackrdbycracku: ... if they teamed up with NZ Post to make it easy to use ShipTo.

New Zealand Post now runs its own forward service called YouShop.

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#692973 28-Sep-2012 15:41

crackrdbycracku:
DonGould:

I agree with the suggestion that it's going to take more than $300m to take on a $1.5b dollar business, and come out alive, if they're going to take on the whole business space of TradeMe and do it by trading on the benefit of simply being cheaper.

D

There is one company who I would back to successfully take on TradeMe and that is eBay if they ever bother to really have a go. They have a lot more than $300m to throw at it and could offer an international reach, particularly if they teamed up with NZ Post to make it easy to use ShipTo. But I doubt they would be interested in a market as small as NZ.

Other than that, good luck.

Trade Me made a $75m profit last year (IIRC). And that is basically owning the entire market.

Even if you could successfully take 50% of the market share from them tomorrow with a $300m investment, it would take you 8 years just to make that back. Considering how fast the world moves these days I'd call that pretty risky.

eBay tried and failed in NZ - and that was years ago, long before Trade Me was sold to Fairfax in '06. If they couldn't take it then, I seriously doubt they could take it now.

The reality is that this market is 'winner takes all'. It's believe it's a natural monopoly, as a marketplace it works best if there is only 1 player (Maximum number of buyers and sellers in one place).

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DonGould

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#693157 28-Sep-2012 21:02

ajobbins:

Trade Me made a $75m profit last year (IIRC). And that is basically owning the entire market.

Even if you could successfully take 50% of the market share from them tomorrow with a $300m investment, it would take you 8 years just to make that back. Considering how fast the world moves these days I'd call that pretty risky.

I have to agree about the risk.

ajobbins: eBay tried and failed in NZ - and that was years ago, long before Trade Me was sold to Fairfax in '06. If they couldn't take it then, I seriously doubt they could take it now.

Don't agree, in 06 we didn't have a fraction of the BB platform we have today. TM was also a very different product at that point.

ajobbins:
The reality is that this market is 'winner takes all'. It's believe it's a natural monopoly, as a marketplace it works best if there is only 1 player (Maximum number of buyers and sellers in one place).

I don't agree, but I do think that any competitor of any size is going to have to have a different angle to captivate the market.

It doesn't look like they've got that mix right so far, but who knows, come Monday we may find they have a rabbit in the hat we weren't expecting.

What I've seen so far could be just a whole marketing stunt for all we know.

D

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richms

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#693161 28-Sep-2012 21:08

It could just all be a scam to try to manipulate the value of trademe as well since what they have delivered so far is basically worthless.

Richard rich.ms

DonGould

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#693166 28-Sep-2012 21:14

richms: It could just all be a scam to try to manipulate the value of trademe as well since what they have delivered so far is basically worthless.

Ya well that suggestion's not as silly as it sounds. Bit 'tinfoil hatish' there.

Has the stock price actually moved much this week?

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mattwnz

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#693178 28-Sep-2012 21:44

crackrdbycracku:
DonGould:

I agree with the suggestion that it's going to take more than $300m to take on a $1.5b dollar business, and come out alive, if they're going to take on the whole business space of TradeMe and do it by trading on the benefit of simply being cheaper.

D

There is one company who I would back to successfully take on TradeMe and that is eBay if they ever bother to really have a go. They have a lot more than $300m to throw at it and could offer an international reach, particularly if they teamed up with NZ Post to make it easy to use ShipTo. But I doubt they would be interested in a market as small as NZ.?

Other than that, good luck.

They aren't the only company. Facebook could also take it on, as they already have millions of NZers using their website. All they need to do is incorporate some for of online social trading system. But unlikley as NZ is such a small market.

DonGould

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#693440 29-Sep-2012 18:29

mattwnz: They aren't the only company. Facebook could also take it on, as they already have millions of NZers using their website. All they need to do is incorporate some for of online social trading system. But unlikley as NZ is such a small market.

That is a really interesting suggestion and I wonder if FB will move in that direction. They've got the platform in place to do it. The amount of development they would have to do for a return is an interesting question.

What's more interesting is an 'app' that just plugs into the facebook space?

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#693450 29-Sep-2012 18:53

DonGould:
mattwnz: They aren't the only company. Facebook could also take it on, as they already have millions of NZers using their website. All they need to do is incorporate some for of online social trading system. But unlikley as NZ is such a small market.

That is a really interesting suggestion and I wonder if FB will move in that direction. They've got the platform in place to do it. The amount of development they would have to do for a return is an interesting question.

What's more interesting is an 'app' that just plugs into the facebook space?

Facebook will shortly start selling gifts that you can send to people on their birthday, Christmas, etc.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9231827/Facebook_Gifts_could_encourage_users_to_expose_more_private_information?taxonomyId=84

freitasm

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#693721 30-Sep-2012 19:50

Advert just now during TV One's "New Zealand's Got Talent"... Decided to visit the site, it's back online. But incredibly slow. Some pages missing images, some pages missing style sheets.

I don't believe everyone watching TV One suddenly jumped on their computers to try the new site. I suspect their infrastructure is still not quite ready for prime time.

Also, they are wasting a lot of bandwidth. If they only put a cache-expiry header for the images alone, that would make things a lot faster after first load.

Obviously people with no web experience driving the technical side.

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#693723 30-Sep-2012 19:52

freitasm: Advert just now during TV One's "New Zealand's Got Talent"... Decided to visit the site, it's back online. But incredibly slow. Some pages missing images, some pages missing style sheets.

I don't believe everyone watching TV One suddenly jumped on their computers to try the new site. I suspect their infrastructure is still not quite ready for prime time.

Their advert was also on TV3 during 60 Minutes.

RedJungle

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#693724 30-Sep-2012 19:52

Just saw a terrible ad on prime too.

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