Trademe really has gone downhill

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Smpl Mnmlst
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#3149983 19-Oct-2023 07:44

quickymart:

As to the owner, I thought it was Sam Morgan, then he sold it to Stuff, then bought it back - or has it changed since then?

History of Trade Me is shown here on Wikipedia. Currently owned by Apax Partners - a UK-based private equity firm.

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Bung

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#3149992 19-Oct-2023 08:18

quickymart: As to the owner, I thought it was Sam Morgan, then he sold it to Stuff, then bought it back - or has it changed since then?

"the site was founded in 1999 by New Zealand entrepreneur Sam Morgan, who sold it to Fairfax in 2006 for NZ$700 million.[1] Trade Me was publicly listed as a separate entity on 13 December 2011 under the ticker "TME". In May 2019, Trade Me was acquired by private equity firm Apax Partners for NZ$2.56 billion."

RunningMan

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#3149996 19-Oct-2023 08:32

There was interesting link from that Wikipedia article to the Trade Me Manifesto.

Ten principles to focus on. When you look at all the negative things about the current site, they all contrary to one of those original priciples.

Rushmere

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#3150004 19-Oct-2023 08:52

quickymart:

As to the owner, I thought it was Sam Morgan, then he sold it to Stuff, then bought it back - or has it changed since then?

Sam Morgan sold it to Fairfax in 2006.

Fairfax floated the company and sold off all their remaining shares in 2013, then Apax Partners bought all of the shares and brought it back into private ownership in 2019.

There have been rumours floating for a while that Apax is now getting ready to offload the company.

Bung

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#3150011 19-Oct-2023 09:20

Apax Partners apparently have a history of moving on after 5 years so the crunch can't be too far away.

As for Trade Me I have been buying stainless steel building fasteners from an Auckland supplier using Buy Now. I now realise that they have their own on-line store so while thinking that the only point in buying through TM would be to bid on the items see that this trader now only lists Buy Now.

MikeAqua

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#3150044 19-Oct-2023 09:56

My major beef with TM is the low quality of the searching.

For example: I use Mercury as a search term and I get every outboard posting where someone has included the word 'mercury' in the description. Why because people, selling other brands of outboard have added sentence at the bottom that says "compare with [every other brand of outboard]". TM allow this and it renders the search engine useless.

Mike

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#3150045 19-Oct-2023 09:56

Ait would be good to see TM back on the NZX so Id like to see a public listing.

However I am extremely wary of public listings by Private Equity - after all, they usually only do this to get as much money as they can get after extracting as much value from the company and often window dress a lot to make it look good.

Look at the My Food Bag and Dick Smith disasters.

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ANglEAUT

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#3150113 19-Oct-2023 13:30

quickymart:

ANglEAUT: Maybe that's what is required here. Open up the space for competitors that can succeed.

Many have tried and failed, some in a really big way - remember Wheedle about 10 years ago? ...

Agreed. Apparently, back in the day, even Ebay tried. My point was more that TM has to fail, thereby making space for competition. If it doesn't fail, there will be no space for the competition.

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#3150118 19-Oct-2023 13:55

Here's a blast from the past: https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=48&topicid=150674

(I note that List Sell Trade has also disappeared).

richms

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#3150128 19-Oct-2023 14:31

Bung:

Apax Partners apparently have a history of moving on after 5 years so the crunch can't be too far away.

As for Trade Me I have been buying stainless steel building fasteners from an Auckland supplier using Buy Now. I now realise that they have their own on-line store so while thinking that the only point in buying through TM would be to bid on the items see that this trader now only lists Buy Now.

It's a cheap way to get your brand in front of people, but they seem to have put a stop to the selling of catalogs on there to avoid putting the whole amount of a sale thru it. Also idiot customers get angry when they buy now at a price they are happy with on trademe and then find you sell it for less on your own website and expect to pay the lower amount after finding that.

Richard rich.ms

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#3150129 19-Oct-2023 14:32

MikeAqua:

My major beef with TM is the low quality of the searching.

For example: I use Mercury as a search term and I get every outboard posting where someone has included the word 'mercury' in the description. Why because people, selling other brands of outboard have added sentence at the bottom that says "compare with [every other brand of outboard]". TM allow this and it renders the search engine useless.

I can literally go into a category, look at a listing and put words from that listing into the search and have that listing not come up in the results, just a whole lot of other things. Have had better luck using google to search on trademe.

Richard rich.ms

RunningMan

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#3150179 19-Oct-2023 14:46

richms: [snip] I can literally go into a category, look at a listing and put words from that listing into the search and have that listing not come up in the results, just a whole lot of other things.

This. The search is such a fundamental part of the site, but it it barely functional. It a most basic level it makes wild (wrong) assumptions about what you want to see by restricting what you see to one single category. This can sometimes exclude more that 90% of results. It's a really bizarre approach, as most others return lots of results and let you quickly filter down to the ones relevant for you.

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#3150183 19-Oct-2023 15:03

We’ve had a couple of bad experiences buying on TM recently ie get ghosted after payment. TM did nothing even though they go on about trust, legally obliged etc.

Luckily they weren’t big ticket items but TM definitely gone downhill.

mattwnz

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#3150198 19-Oct-2023 15:52

IMO what did a lot of damage to TM was when they killed off their message boards. It was especially popular after the CHristchurch Earthquakes and was a NZ online community. They do still have a limited system when they half upgraded their site, but it isn't the same thing. That basically meant those people headed off to other social media platforms like Facebook, and meant facebook marketplace also became more popular.

allan

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#3150200 19-Oct-2023 15:57

And just for a laugh, I checked to see if this old spoof site was still around - https://www.tardme.co.nz

It is and oddly enough, the tardme.nz domain has been registered by Trademe themselves, although it doesn't resolve anywhere.

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