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OnlineAuction CEO Chris Fain

(JIM KROIS/Daily Courier)

By Susan Goracke of The Daily Courier

Online Auction is stepping up in the world.

Earlier this month, the Grants Pass-based company’s founder Chris Fain and his wife, Valerie, traveled to Belfast in Northern Ireland to attend a business conference.

They were among 50 chief executive officers of U.S. companies invited to meet with United Kingdom officials including former First Minister Ian Paisley of Northern Ireland and Prime Minister Gordon Brown of England.

The conference objective: to persuade these companies to consider expanding – if not outright moving their operation headquarters – to Northern Ireland.

“They would love to have Online Auction move to Belfast. They really put on the dog. It was first-cabin all the way,” said Fain, back in Grants Pass after the trip, which included a stopover in New York City to meet with a businessman who wants to help expand Online Auction’s presence into Dubai on the Persian Gulf.

“These are the types of things that are coming at Online Auction these days,” added Fain, who’s a bit surprised, himself, at the attention his company has received in recent months. He’s been in contact with business owners in Australia, Europe and South America who want to do business on Online Auction.

It’s a heady feeling for Fain, who resurrected his company – originally launched in 1999 – in 2004, after it was taken over by CD Micro, a software distribution company that declared bankruptcy in 2003.

In less than four years, the newest version of Fain’s company has grown dramatically and is nipping at giant eBay’s heels.

“We have 13 million items listed on our Web site and we’re going on having 50,000 registered users,” Fain said.

Many of them are former eBay sellers who got fed up with higher fees and rules that favor buyers over sellers, he explained.

“The sellers are who built eBay, and it’s the sellers who are up in arms,” Fain said, pointing to a rule that went into effect this spring that prevents sellers from being able to post a negative testimonial against a buyer who didn’t pay or play fair.
Another reason sellers are flocking to Online Auction is the company’s policy of charging sellers a flat monthly fee of $8 to list an unlimited amount of items for sale.

While the company has instituted a few extra fees for such things as better placement among listings, the amount of extra charges is minimal, Fain said.

“We’re a least-cost competitor in a very competitive marketplace,” he added.

Randy Ruzicka of Eugene, a former eBay “power seller” who specializes in older cars, signed on with Online Auction in 2004 and now is on the company’s board of directors.

“When I first started on eBay in 1999, it was $20 to sell (a car),” he explained. “Then suddenly it was $20 to list, and $20 to sell. Now it costs about $80 to list and another $20 to sell. If it doesn’t sell, it costs $50 to re-list. They try to charge you for everything.”

“What happened with eBay, they became so greedy,” Fain said. “Some sellers pay $60,000 a month in fees. I personally know what it was like to pay $7,000 a month in fees.”

Another change from eBay’s rules is Online Auction’s practice of allowing auctions to go on as long as bidding is still active.

“We increased the ending time to 75 seconds, which allows everybody in the world to respond,” Fain said.

Mohamed Ramzi Ismail, a businessman Fain met in New York, plans to meet with Fain again in Dubai later this year.

“We are working with Chris to help facilitate onlineauction.com‘s reach in international markets,” Ismail wrote to the Daily Courier in an e-mail. “There are tremendous opportunities for growth on a global level … Onlineauction.com can be a great vehicle for providing individuals and businesses of all sizes access to trading goods and services with one another. It can truly serve as a global marketplace.”

He added, “I see onlineauction.com having a strong presence in places like Europe, Dubai, Egypt, Australia and emerging markets in South America and Asia pretty quickly. Over the long-term, it can be a great market for microbusinesses in developing countries – even in places like West Africa – where with a computer, Internet connection and onlineauction.com, they can sell what they have to buyers in any place in the world.”

Fain confirmed Online Auction plans to “go international” and possibly expand into Great Britain or Ireland one day. But he added that he’s committed to building the company in Grants Pass.

Already, Online Auction has more than 20 mostly full-time employees, and is looking to hire more, especially people with information technology backgrounds. Some of Online Auction’s information technology employees earn salaries of $5,000 a month, according to Fain, although other employees make closer to $13 an hour.

“EBay has 15,000 employees, and we are less than two dozen,” he said. “But we are growing by leaps and bounds.

“We’ve built this thing into being a major player,” he added. “We’re bringing the river of e-commerce right here to little old Grants Pass.”

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Reach reporter Susan Goracke at 474-3725 or sgoracke@thedailycourier.com

Reprinted by permission of The Daily Courier

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