A Challenger to eBay with a Charity Twist
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It takes guts to go after marketshare when a giant such as eBay is your competition but new auction website Quty has decided to give it a go. There unique twist on online auctions – 5% of the profits go direct to charity.
The Quty 5 Percent Initiative
From the very early stages of Quty’s development, our co-founders have believed that one of the responsibilities of a successful company is to give back to the communities that help them become successful. We decided the most consistent way of achieving this is to permanently dedicate 5% of our topline company revenues to helping the folks who are most in need in the local areas where our users live. That’s why we created what we call “the Quty 5 Percent Initiative” or “5i”.
We examined some of each individual’s basic needs such as food, a roof over our head and the clothes on our back, a lot of things most of us don’t even think about on a daily basis.
We then looked at Ebay.com as an obvious example of an auction site. With 2004 revenues in excess in $3 billion dollars, 5% would be about $150 million that could be donated to local humanitarian initiatives right in the same state where users live. It may take a while before we get to the size of our competition, but we like to think big. And the bigger we grow, the more we’ll be able to give.
[ Visit Quty ]
In a market such as online auctions it’s very difficult to reach critical mass because of the network effects already enjoyed by the incumbent. EBay has the sellers therefore eBay has the buyers and vice versa. The switching costs to move away from eBay are significant- less selection for buyers and lower prices for sellers because of reduced competition keeping auction prices down.
Kudos to Quty for coming up with a morally friendly auction model and I hope they can establish enough traction to at least stay in operation. The reality of course is that they will not challenge eBay. No company will ever likely challenge eBay’s position in online auctions unless the whole system changes or something better comes along and people no longer use online auctions to conduct commerce.
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Great idea — too bad eBay now offers the option as well to donate a % to a charity.
Is that a new option Jason? I wasn’t aware of the givingworks program but am not sure if that has been around awhile or not.
http://pages.ebay.com/givingworks/
How absolutely redicolous of Quty to try to put down eBay.
eBay’s founder Pierre Omidyar is a philanthropist, they offer lots of money to foundations and organizations to get established.
Anyway, good luck creating an auction site against eBay, while they are at it, they might as well make a search Engine.
I still think there is room in the market to build auction sites and even search engines. You just have to create it in a niche market — one market that I know of and have experience in is Magician Props/Tricks.
Because of the high retail cost of many props and lack of a large market to sell old props too — it becomes difficult to find buyers…even on eBay — that is why a niche auction site dedicated to magicians or any other niche market could be beneficial.
I believe the same is true with search engine..if you can build a search engine in a niche market and concentrate soely on organizing that niches information…I would tend to believe the result or quality of sites lists in that niche search engine would be much better — if not…than at least you have a chance to be bought out by one of the big search engines — who knows.
Isn’t amazing you have the big mother of all auctions sites and they keep all their profits despite making billions a year.
And yet you have small players on the scene and they have a big heart and want to help the needy.
Regards
fin212
It is innovative new sites like Quty that keep the big dogs on their toes. I admire Quty and their style and their charity. Just because eBay is big doesn’t mean they should have it all. I believe sites like Quty can give online auctions a run for their money!
I agree with Allen, just because eBay is big doesn’t mean they should have it all.Excellent blog.