I received a call tonight from one of the owners of reef bids asking all kind of of questions about how I buy corals, what incentives I like to see, what I think of his site and the way they sell. I thought that I would share what direction that he is heading with the web site and business.
What he is wanting to do is to start basically a online consignment for sellers and buyers. For instance I would list all the different corals I might have for sale. The buyer would put the coral they were interested in into their basket and then get a shipping quote from them. The buyer would them pay reef bids for the coral and shipping. Reef bids would then issue me a prepaid shipping label and the I would then be responsible to pack and ship the purchased coral. Reef bids would then also pay me for the purchased corals minus a 10% selling fee.
I thought this sounds like an interesting idea that could make it nice to purchase corals online. For one this would be a central place to look for corals online. It can get frustrating to try and find a new coral online while surfing several different site's for sale threads each day. The shipping cost would be lower since you would be using their account and shipping discounts. The other thing that might help out with would be to make it competitive for sellers and might bring down the price of many of the higher ended corals.
what do you think?
Jeff