Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Biddees Launches Gift Card Auction Site

Santa Monica-based Biddees, a new startup founded by a number of veterans from Shoes.com, has launched a new web site today focused on decreasing reverse auctions of gift cards. The site allows consumers to buy gifts cards from such companies as Amazon.com, Walmart, and other brand name retailers using a reverse auction, combined with donations to nonprofits. The site sells gifts cards at a discount, with the twist that it does not allow users to see the current price of cards until they use a bid credit (which costs 99 cents). The use of a bid credit decreases the price of those gift cards by 50 cents, and gives the user an option to then buy the card--or wait until that card has received other bids and decreases in price. A portion of that bid goes directly to a nonprofit of the user's choice. The firm is headed by Steve Adler and Dan Zuckerman, the co-founders of Shoes.com and The Walking Company, and was started by Barry Shore, founder of Fax4Free.com. The firm's reverse auction is similar to sites like Swoopo and others.