Good on them, If they think they can create a viable alternative to Trade Me excellent. Competition drives the world, but cut the rhetoric “for New Zealanders by New Zealanders,” PLEASE! . My guess is, if it was a success and a foreign company came along offering them bucket loads of money they would jump at it. Then it just becomes another Trade Me or as I look at it, a Kiwi success story.

There already is decent a fee free alternative - Sella. Problem is Trademe has the cirtical mass and not enough people use it.

Dream on mate. How did this guy even get airtime on the NBR?

Electricity is expensive - think ll build my own hydro dam - that will show em!
Oh and petrol - Ill just drop a well and refine my own - screw the arabs. Come on guys dream on - dont waste your time and money and NBR dont waste news space on this crap

This is just PR for the web company behind it all.

They build WordPress sites. And they're somehow going to make the leap to building an auction site to compete with Trademe. It's like a toothpick maker deciding to rebuild Christchurch Cathedral.

Thanks for the comments - while we do focus on Wordpress websites, that's simply because Wordpress is the worlds leading CMS platform and, with the number of plugins and themes available, is great for small businesses. That does not mean that we can't build something larger - we have experience across a wide-range of platforms and technologies.

I personally had some bad experiences with TradeMe recently, decided to look for an alternative - sella.co.nz is great but the way we see it, the more competition, the better.

We have some interesting ideas in the works, so don't pass it off just yet!

I am undecided if this is simply PR for the company or they are serious. To give them the benefit of the doubt as per the last post and they are serious here is some thoughts.

Research into these online markets shows that the leader gets around 80% market share (Trademe) the second guys 12% then the rest fight over 8%. Not sure this holds for NZ but it did for the likes of Amazon, Ebay and Betfair. So if they do start they will be scrapping over a small share of a small NZ market.

The second observation there is great inertia in people changing. We all hate at some time our banks, internet provider, mobile provider etc but how many of us actually take the time and effort to change. Look at the money invested by 2 Degrees to get people to switch to much cheaper mobile.

If they will not switch to Sella which is free why go to anything else? Most users are not interested in some new way of doing things - and if they do start to move then TradeMe just copies.

To me it just is a very hard ask to see this working.

YEAH RIGHT!!!!!!!

It will not work!!! watch and see.....NZ is just too small, another finance co in disguise, it will go the same way down the gurgler, don't pull your hands out of your pockets people.

I was going to ignore this, but I have to comment because this kind of thinking is what pushes developers into bad habits. Next you'll be telling me that ASP.NET MVC isn't a real MVC framework.

Actually, all of these are available in the form of plugins. And even if they weren't, we can certainly create them.

You may scoff at our use of "CMS", and how Wordpress doesn't match your idea of a "Content Management System" but you seem forget that it the most widely adopted CMS available - in use by over 35 million websites for content management.

Most small businesses don't care about document/workflow management etc - they simply want a system to manage their content.

As with anything, in web development you have to pick the tools and technologies that are right for the job.

How is this even news worthy.

Good luck to them, competition is a good thing.

It is sad so many negative people read the NBR, I wonder if any of those commenting have ever had the gumption to run their own business, or at least try.

Easy to criticise people's dreams from behind your cubicle desks and fortnightly salary payments.

Best of luck

“for New Zealanders, by New Zealanders”.
- Yeah right - Stuart Taoro-Ah Sin is a real kiwi name - NOT

What's an aution giant? NBR staff need to head to TradeMe and buy a spell check app.

Actually it's is my father's name and I wear it proudly.
I am of Pakeha/ Maori/ Cook Island decent and I was born in NZ, raised in NZ and I spent 10 years in gumboots, looking after the backbone of our nation. Now if that doesnt make me a NZer then what will?

The most innovative thing they could have done would have been to register nzbuyandsell.co.nz and get some free publicity from Shortland St. However, someone else did that a few months ago...

I have read the article and the posts of and observe the following:
1. Trademe is probably the best example of a site that was started by New Zealanders for New Zealanders.
2. Trademe has very few problems. Anyone who thinks it does has not actively used Ebay or suffered the agony of many corporate websites.
3. Sella is free, and the reason why it is still small is that to do what it needs it needs to charge money. You get what you pay for.
4. Trademe enjoyed the success because they did it right.
5. ALL VENTURES including trademe will always have people who have bad experiences. That is life.
6. The idea that a site like trademe could exist with millions of users and tens of millions of auctions and no problems can only exist in someones utopian fantasy world, where people are created by a computer program and are always logical and rational - according to the programmers set of values which will not suit everybody - so you back to square one.
7. Trademe has the market share because they have done it right, and the market likes it.
8. Sam Morgan sold tradme because he was offered somuch money that he would not have to work again and he could pursue his dreams - who would turn that down?
8. Competition is good. Lets encourage competition and anyone who can do it more right than trademe. And let the market decide.

Almost anyone can take a basic Wordpress installation, throw on a skin someone else created and call it a website. But that's a long way from genuine web design.

Why does Minion Interactive's own site rate a zero on Google? Maybe it's because the domain was first registered just three months ago. These guys don't have a lot of experience.

And note that they're not launching a site to knock Trademe off its perch - they're just saying that they "intend" to build one. One day. Maybe. Or maybe not.

Shame on NBR for publishing this pointless piece of self-promotion verbatim.

"Why does Minion Interactive's own site rate a zero on Google?"
I am assuming you mean PR - it's widely known that PR doesn't matter much anymore. And this has absolutely nothing to do with it's registration date - it's based on the quantity and quality of external links.

As for the statement that we don't have a lot of experience - I've been doing this fulltime for over 10 years and have worked on some major international projects.

Just a side question: What tools/technologies would you consider genuine web design?

There's so much negativity re: wordpress/web design in these comments - How about we start a competition and turn this into something that will benefit everyone?

@Minion - your comment that the age of a site doesn't affect it's PR is naive at best and shows that you have very little idea of SEO. Domain age is one major factor that affects Google's page rank, but I'm not surprised that you were unaware of that. Check out Matt Cutts blog for some handy hints in this area.

Dozens of others have tried to set up auction sites to compete with TM and they've all failed. Some of them were quite well funded as well. As to "lending a hand" - sorry, but I'd rather devote my time to projects that stand a chance of success.

Good luck to you. It would be nice to see somebody put up a genuine challenge to TM. But with little understanding of the web and only a tiny handful of Facebook followers, I seriously doubt that it will be you. I will be watching with interest, but only from the sidelines.

Just found this after I posted that last comment.. Looks like we both might be slightly incorrect. Anyway, thought it might be a useful read.

http://www.promotionworld.com/se/articles/article/110825-Does-Domain-Age-Matter-When-Ranking-Google

This will be my last post here, I'm going to concentrate on getting this thing going now - Keep watching :)

Whats the difference!!! trade me, face-book they are all the same, as long as they make money they don't give a rats about the people using them or the problems people have with them. I'm sure if they cared more and helped then it would be a better place to sell/buy- play and talk without all the policy butt crap or crap talk they throw at you as their answer to helping people where it ends up as all bull n crap.