New marketplaces – Wigex and Fiddel

Two new marketplaces have come to my attention, one of which might even have legs.

Wigix is a new marketplace which aims to work like a stock market matching buyers and sellers.  As a seller you state a price you are willing to sell at and this is displayed to buyers who are looking for that item, and vise versa. 

The site works on an inventory basis which will give good structure to the listings, something which eBay lacks.  The inventory based nature of the site allows a market price to be assigned to a product, which I think is a very nice feature.  Where as on eBay you have to guess what a product is worth based on limited information, this site sticks its neck out.  However, it was not clear how the price was calculated, a rolling average perhaps.

There are no listing fees on Wigix, but i am surprised to report that it has both buyer and seller final value fees.  I find the seller side very surprising!!

I am usually super sceptical about marketplace competitors to eBay, but this one looks like it has been well constructed unlike say, Bideasi.  The problem they will have is one of momentum, as this marketplaces require huge numbers of users to give the returns required by their VC investors. Also eBay has had over 10 years to get their model right, dealing with issues such payments, fraud and building a community.  Wigix will have to catch up very quickly to be able to compete, I can only hope they have a large budget

I am somewhat less impressed with fididel.  The USP for this site is to allow buyers and seller to haggle in real time.  This is supposidly ‘fun’.  Sounds like a real pain for both buyers and sellers for me, and not something out of which a viable marketplace could be built.