Used-goods top dollar gets harder: Trade Me
A handbag used by Tana Umaga to hit Chris Masoe over the head in a Christchurch pub is still Trade Me’s most viewed auction ever, 13 years on.
The online auction website is marking its 20th anniversary.
That auction, in 2006, pulled in
1.07 million views before the bag sold for $22,800 to Susie Langmaid, who said she was buying it on behalf of a friend.
The second-most popular was a ‘‘possessed printer’’ listed in
2013 that racked up a million views. ‘‘Words cannot express how much I hate this printer,’’ the listing began.
‘‘It never works when I need it to – it’s like it knows when I have to urgently print something.’’
The third-most popular listing was the opportunity to ‘‘push the button’’ on the explosives to bring down Radio Network House in Christchurch.
Trade Me chief executive Jon Macdonald said a lot had changed over 20 years. He has worked for the site for the past 15 years, but last year signalled his intention to step down in early 2019.
‘‘What we were asking people to do was very strange at the time: buying something you’d never seen off someone you’d never met,’’ he said.
‘‘In the early 2000s, viewing a car or a job or a property online was a foreign concept to most New Zealanders. Now it’s as normal as fish and chips.’’
Trade Me launched with a listing for founder Sam Morgan’s
21-inch Akai television, on which bidding started at $200.
The first vehicle listed for sale was a Subaru Impreza in 2003. The first property was a house for $250,000 in Mission Bay in 2005.
Macdonald said that although the site had started for the purpose of auctioning used goods, it had expanded well beyond that. About half the things sold on the site now are new.
‘‘That’s still a really key part of the business, but we do a lot more beside it.’’
Trade Me Property, Jobs and Motors had grown quickly, he said. There is also now an insurance business and dating site FindSomeone.
There is different competition now, too. Facebook’s Marketplace platform offers a free option for people wanting to sell.
Trade Me has hit back by offering fees-free listings to targeted groups of members.
‘‘We are having to share New Zealand with Facebook,’’ Macdonald said. ‘‘But we are as strong as ever.’’
He said it was harder to get top prices for secondhand goods than it had once been.
‘‘As you make it easier to do something it does mean more people do it and there’s more competition. Even though you have made it easier, it makes it harder in a sense. That’s real,’’ Macdonald said.
‘‘New goods have also got cheaper and a key proposition of used goods is the discount to new. As new gets cheaper, the pressure goes on used goods, as well.’’
In the company’s most recent financial statements, for the halfyear to the end of 2018, Trade Me noted sales of used goods were down 0.8 per cent year-on-year but this was offset by growth in new goods, up 2.9 per cent.
Macdonald said the website would focus on making things as easy as possible for buyers and sellers. Machine learning would help to show members the types of listings they were most likely to look for.
He said he was particularly proud of the site having helped a number of small businesses get their start.
‘‘Many a garage across the country was converted into a new online business and a number of those have grown into substantial stores which still sell with us today,’’ he said.
‘‘As you make it easier to do something it does mean more people do it and there’s more competition. Even though you have made it easier, it makes it harder in a sense. That’s real.’’
Trade Me chief executive Jon Macdonald, above