| Wagglepop's Ray Romeo and Andrew Pittino Separated at birth? |
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| Jan 25, 2008 at 02:20 PM | |
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It seems like the Wagglepop is in its death throws. Andrew Pittino has recently blamed the non-paying sellers for not making Wagglepop a success. Ray Romeo himself blamed sellers for not supporting Wagglepop 1. "Andrew" also claims that Wagglepop has had $150,000 in expenses, and about $45,000 in "outright debt". Ray Romeo himself suggested that Wagglepop 1 was worth $45,000, at least that's what the bidding for his first failure was going to start at. These are Andrew's recent remarks about "changes" to Wagglepop, even creating polls, asking sellers if they'd like to keep prices the same and remove features, or raise prices and keep the features. He seemed disgusted that people wouldn't support a fee increase. Hit the jump for "Andrew's" announcement and posts. I got that information from a poster on Tuliptools.com Tags about Wagglepop: http://sneakydave.com/forum/index.php?action=tags;id=63">http://sneakydave.com/forum/index.php?action=tags;id=63 More on Wagglepop: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=wagglepop+site%3Asneakydave.com&btnG=Google+Search wagglepopCC2 Sun 01/20/08 4:51 pm Hello Wagglepop Members, We are hosting a "Pizza Lunch" discussion meeting here on the SSP Merchant Marketplace board on Monday 1/21 at 1:00 PM EST that will last for approximately one full hour. The primary purpose of the meeting is to discuss the state of Wagglepop as it currently operates and to announce some changes we are going to make moving ahead to ensure that we can continue to provide an effective and affordable eBay alternative. While the individual support from our main seller base (and buyer base) has been strong and very much appreciated, Wagglepop is not nearly what we had envisioned in terms of volume or overall participation relative to the expenses for the creation of and support of the site as it exists today. With that reality comes unique and important challenges. Internally we have spent the last several weeks reviewing reaction to Wagglepop by the "online selling community" (both participatory and non-participatory), the third-party providers, and the "auction support sites" that "report" on auction site news and activity. Our conclusions are clear and pointed and have led to the creation of a task list for changes we feel we should and must make to Wagglepop moving ahead. Wagglepop members deserve a site and community that gives them everything they need to conduct business in a fair and balanced environment under a fair and balanced fee structure. The changes we will make will ensure our ability to provide that opportunity to those that would make use of it both today and in the future while at the same time reflecting the reality of the behaviors of a large portion of the online selling community. A "100% trust-based" enviroment such as Wagglepop supports has represented a challenge greater than ever anticipated. I will open the meeting at 1:00 PM on 1/21 with a detailed statement, a short announcement and then open the floor for question and answer for the following hour. Thank you to all of our Wagglepop members that have helped to build Wagglepop into one of the few truly effective eBay alternatives and we look forward while adapting to partcipatory realities to offering that opportunity for many years to come. Perhaps a little historical perspective is in order. Below you will find some numbers that we find shocking and disheartening, but mostly damning in the way it reflects on the overall "online selling community" that collectively created it: Current Stores: 130 Stores Terminated for Non-Payment: 3,125 Stores Closed: 772 Of the "Stores Closed" number, over 50% were closed in less than 30 days and over 85% in less than 90 days. Hardly enough time to get a URL indexed let alone build a business. The Non-Payment rate is shameful. Wagglepop is a "100% trust-based" community, and we now know what the "online selling community" as whole will do with trust. Outside of our longer term seller base, clearly nothing good or proper. In the single month where we had a "high" of 910 Stores, the non-payment rate exceeded 65%! Many have asked about "advertising" and the best answer I can give is that we tried that to this end - a near 80% non-payment rate over 45 days of the campaign, an onslaught of NPB's, and nothing more than what I will characterize than an "outrageously large" bill to show for it. Indeed, the entirety of Wagglepop represents not much more than one big expense, to date not a single month with revenues exceeding expenses and correspondingly no recovery of invested monies. The most surprising part of that is that Wagglepop was created not for ownership to benefit, but for membership benefit. The following changes are being made to reflect the realities from my comments above: 1. On 1/28/08-1/29/08, between the hours of 8:00 PM and 8:00 AM all access to Wagglepop will be temporarily interrupted. The interruption is necessary to migrate from our existing array of servers over to a setup more "in line" with current participation and support. Once back online, expect intermittent access issues for approximately 48 hours due to DNS propagation. 2. Customer Care will be down temporarily during 1/28 and 1/29 while we restructure the support staff. FINAL DELINQUENCY NOTICE WP Members, Final Delinquency Notices have been issued for 44 accounts which are overdue for payment for the month of January. Effective immediately, accounts not brought up to date within the next 48 hours "final additional grace period" will: a) be terminated or b) require a $30.00 delinquent account reactivation fee to re-activate and which attaches a 90 probationary credit review period Wagglepop seller invoices are issued on the 10th sitewide, and due by the 15th with an additional 4 day grace period until the 19th. In subsequent months, a single Delinquency Notice will be issued on the 20th, and accounts not brought up to date within 24 hours based on that single notice will be terminated. "SmartSell Pro Merchant Marketplace - We The People - Public Membership Vote 1/23 - 1/26 wagglepopCC2 Wed 01/23/08 5:06 pm Hello Wagglepop Members, Although not quite in the format originally intended by design, we are going to open part of the We The People Program later this afternoon. Specifically, the public voting/commenting mechanism. While WTP is not designed as a direct assignment of majority it will very closely influence the decisions we make on the subjects for consideration. Some very important decisions need to be made at this time so that we may re-construct Wagglepop to reflect the needs of membership and our place in the online marketplace in general. While it has become clear to us that Wagglepop is unlikely (based on my post from yesterday) to achieve the goals we had established initially as the "crux" of it's creation, I think there is an excellent foundation to be "reborn" as a tightly-knit specialty marketplace. Sometimes in business, smaller can be better. If we can get a stronger gauge on revenues and have a better expectation of those revenues we can use that to support a more focused community and marketplace. I think a good analogy is that if we don't need to maintain a cruise ship with 3,000 unruly passengers, we'll be better able to serve the 100 passengers who simply wish to be a solid part of the trip - in a smaller craft with a staff more able to attend to and support them. The most important thing for me with any business is being open to and able to recognize when, where, and how a business must evolve to first survive, and then thrive. Your vote will do much to help form our final direction as we work to build a better Wagglepop for those that wish to support it. Please include comments in the voting thread as well as your vote - all submissions are welcomed and even necessary as we use that input to craft the future of Wagglepop. I expect the WTP Vote to start by mid-afternoon today. Andrew P. WP This WTP Poll: Marketplace Admission To date we have operated under an "open door" policy of admission to become a Wagglepop seller. While that policy in theory has it's benefits, in application it has been an abject failure and a key root cause of many of the current participation and revenue issues. Please vote and ofer your input in this Public Poll about how you fee the Wagglepop Marketplace should add new members in the future to the existing base. ------------------------------------------------------------- How should new sellers (if any) enter the Wagglepop Marketplace? A. Keep the Wagglepop Marketplace as-is with open registration. B. Require new applicants to pay a Marketplace Fee of $50.00 for entry. C. Close the Wagglepop Marketplace entirely to new applicants. What do you think is the best way to keep Wagglepop available as a smaller community in terms of the Fee Structure? A. Keep Wagglepop as-is. I will deal with any service and performance issues that may arise. B. Keep SmartSell Pro at $9.95, but raise Final Value Fees to eBay levels. C. Raise SmartSell Pro to $19.95, but keep Final Value Fees as-is. D. Raise SmartSell Pro to $19.95 and raise Final Value Fees to eBay levels. E. Raise SmartSell Pro to $39.95 and eliminate all Final Value Fees. Seller Accounts Credit Policy As noted in a pervious post, our "100% trust-based" community has not withstood what has shown itself to be an intolerably high delinquency rate for seller accounts. Please vote and offer input into they best way to address that so we may build and keep a Marketplace of trustworthy and dedicated sellers along with collecting proper revenues. ------------------ What should the Seller Account Credit Policy be? A. Keep as-is: 30 days at zero interest extended up to $110.00 maximum credit. B. Lower the credit limit to $3-5 range and have the system automatically lock accounts and require accounts be brought current and/or pre-funded. I'm not sure we have related fully or completely enough exactly how expensive it is to run Wagglepop or how much it cost to build it into such a uniquely high-performing feature laden site. I would classify the refusal to raise fees or cut any expenses to date that support WP as 'shockingly generous' (even by my own measure) on the part of ownership considering the numbers I posted yesterday. We simply cannot subsidize it's operation at current standards any further without both increasing revenues and reducing expenses, and that is on my strenous recommendation to ownership at the risk of my continued participation here. As noted above, we can continue to operate without raising fees, but the site is without question going to suffer noticeably in terms of performance and service. As a follow up, total losses since the creation and inception of Wagglepop now exceed $150,000 total, with about $45,000 of that as outright debt. We spent that money on custom programming, on servers, on support training and staff, on technical support, on consulting, on offices and equipment and on building a "24/7" enterprise where any issue could be addressed properly and quickly. Essentially, we built a professional company with a presentation in every regard ready for growth and third-party affiliations. The loss represents both invested money, loaned money, and monthly underwriting. Additionally many thousands of hours of labor have been "donated" and exist today as unpaid - and likely never to be paid. For what we were building, it was an appropriate investment. For what participation ultimately showed, we could have built something similar for about $25,000, including a subsidy. There is a reason that there is basically nothing else out there like Wagglepop is terms of features and performance, most notably the costs involved above all else. For a long time Wagglepop could have handled a 100 fold increase in traffic and listings and Stores without nary a hitch - all was in place for that, scalable and planned for. The reality is though a noble effort, instead of succeeding in that venture we have instead built a very effective specialty site - and now we muct adapt to that and support that appropriately. While I am not one to generally worry about "blame", I would offer that it is not Wagglepop staff or ownership or management to blame for any shortfall in our goals together, rather, I would look to the over 3,000 people who never bothered to pay, or the in excess of 600 who left in less than 90 days expecting a business miracle. I am proud of my staff and support vendors and honored to work under such people-oriented ownership. I am blown away by the commitment WP ownership made for a very long time to give the online selling community a real choice and opportunity to build a truly large and worthy competitor to eBay - it is a considerably bigger commitment of time and effort and money than anyone else has ever or will likely ever offer. It is my responsibility now to begin to restructure the bigger Wagglepop entity that is seemingly unwanted and clearly unsupported by the bigger outside "online selling community" as it is. Instead, we will support our loyal seller base by rebuilding Wagglepop under a structure of expenses and revenues that can support them as they deserve and have demonstrated support for... Our biggest mistake was simply not realizing the depths to which a great bulk of the online selling community had fallen - due either to eBay or previous experience or something else entirely. We listened to the near 7,000 or so people who were on our legacy email list that they were committed to selling on Wagglepop, only to find out 2 or 3 years later that that "commitment" was a castle built of sand - a mirage that did nothing more than hurt the very people we wished to support and help. |
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| Last Updated ( Mar 03, 2008 at 09:46 PM ) |
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