The founders of Backcountry.com are hiking in a new direction. Convinced that online customers and specialty retailers are looking for alternatives to eBay, Backcountry CEO Jim Holland and president John Bresee have acquired the assets of GearTrade.com and are re-launching the site.
GearTrade is an online marketplace that lets outdoor enthusiasts list their unwanted gear and specialty retailers their liquidated and closeout merchandise at a fixed price and then sell it on a first-come, first-serve basis. GearTrade was founded in 1998 and quickly developed an audience in the outdoor gear space. But it went through a series of owners and closed, Bresee says.
Holland and Bresee recently acquired GearTrade’s assets, including the software and intellectual property rights, for an undisclosed price, then re-launched the site during the week of July 18.
The new GearTrade.com will be run as a separate entity from Backcountry.com, which ranks as No.176 on the Internet Retailer Top 400 Guide to Retail Web Sites. “Jim and I are putting our own money into this,” Bresee says.
GearTrade.com lets sellers and specialty retailers list their own gear and set their own fixed price. GearTrade will provide services such as web hosting, transaction processing and act as a liaison between the buyer and the seller. Bresee and Holland will also leverage GearTrade and market it to retailers who want to build their own private label exchange for closeout merchandise. “It’s a business model that can be marketed to individuals, online communities and specialty retailers,” Bresee says. “The concept is very different from eBay because the seller can list a fixed price.”
GearTrade will pay individuals and retailers a commission for listing and selling gear, though pricing is still being finalized. For now there are no listing fees and GearTrade will collect a 10% commission on each transaction, Breese says.
Eventually GearTrade could be rolled out to other retail segments, but will initially be marketed to the outdoor gear space.
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