Adam Doyle
chester, ALD (UK)
Role(s):
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Wicaboo
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Startup
Location:
chester
Industry:
Internet
Year Founded:
2009
Number Employees:
1-10 people
Description:
My name is Adam Doyle and I am one of the founders of Wicaboo ((URL removed)) I have come across your name while looking through google so I hope I have came to the right please.
Wicaboo is a reverse auction website where the prices of items go down instead of up. This is a fairly new concept for the U.K but various models have been running successfully for a number of years in both mainland Europe and the U.S.A.
The basic premise for all the auction formats is the user buys bid credits in order to reveal the price of an item or to place a bid in the lowest unique bid format.
We have 3 main formats for bids on the site:
1/ Buy It Now: Simple and straight forward, a user pays 1 bid to see the price of an item, if they like the price they can simply buy it then and there, if they do not wish to purchase at that price the cost of the item is reduced for the next bidder. Wicaboo has a price match guarantee in place as you will see on the site and items can be purchased cheaper than the high street.
2/ Zero and Super Zero: Again very simple, each time a bidder views the price the price goes down until the last bidder takes the item from 0.50p to 0p and effectively wins whatever the item is for the price of 1 bid.
3/Unique Bid: The most well known of all the auction formats and the most fun! This is the auction we would look to promote with the sponsored vehicle. An item is placed for auction and the lowest unique bid wins the item at no extra cost. In this case the auction would be run on as a timed event and finish at a specific time regardless of bids generated.
Obviously like most new business initially cash inputs to promote the company is our problem. We have managed to sell the idea to;
The Red Issue – We managed to secure free advertising Manchester Uniteds fans website to a constant stream of 800-1000 users each day. This will be key in growing the company in the future as it has a large global audience with it being Manchester United
A large Radio station – We are just awaiting to find out when the competition date will be, they have a large listen audience and 70,000 who are signed in to their competition mailer list
National Newspaper – We have managed to secure a week’s worth of free advertising which includes a competition. We have to offer a car to the retail price of £10,000. With us being limited on a cash flow we are trying to source a car via a dealer and get them added to our weeks long sponsorship. If we had an investor we would be in the paper with over 1million audience and very confident on the returns.
A national ladies magazine – This is 80% agreed and we are just waiting for the finer details to be sorted over the next week or 2.
Our main problem is lack of cash flow to promote our company. We work on this in the evenings as we have full time jobs so already we have managed to push the company in the right direction to the right people. With the costs of monthly server and hosting fees, cost for IT work on website this is where we really have got to the point of needing support in a business and finance sense.
I look forward to your feedback or even if you could point me in the correct direction.
Regards
Adam Doyle