Saturday 14 June 2014

16 Top eCommerce Business Sales – Sell Your Ecommerce Business for Millions

When most people think of ecommerce, they tend to think of retail websites. In reality, ecommerce consists of everything that has to do with trading products or services electronically. This means all of the payment processing, ecommerce software, third party processing, and everything else that has to do with buy and selling electronically. The reason why we are going over this basic information is to give you an idea on how many ecommerce business opportunities there are and then to show you how much those opportunities can be worth in the long run.

In this article we will be going over some of the biggest ecommerce sales and looking at how much you could potentially make with a company that is directly involved with doing business over the internet.

#1 – PayPal.com – Sold for $1.5 Billion

Year founded: 1998
Year sold: 2002
PayPal is a e-commerce business that processes payments and money transfers throughout the internet. It is used internationally and is the biggest alternative to using traditional transfer methods. On October 3rd, 2002 eBay bought PayPal for 1.5 billion dollars. Throughout the years PayPal has grown into a company that has a revenue (2002) of 5.6 billion dollars and continues to see a rise in growth. What once was just a payment processor for small transactions turned into a multi-billion dollar powerhouse.

#2 – Billmelater.com - Sold for $1.2 Billion

Year founded: 2000
Year sold: 2008
Bill Me Later is a proprietary payment option that has been offered on a lot of well-known websites. It offers customers a line of revolving credit which allows them to make purchases online without using a credit card. PayPal purchased Bill Me Later on November 7, 2008 for 1.2 billion dollars. While the concept took a little while to get popular, the company has become more and more popular.

#3 – Zappos.com – Sold for $1.5 Billion

Year founded: 1999
Year sold: 2009
Zappos is an online retail website that sells shoes and clothing. Based in Las Vegas, Nevada, the company was founded by Nick Swinmurn and his company was seeing over 8 million dollars in revenue within just 2 years. The company is now seeing over 1 billion dollars in revenue per year and was purchased by Amazon in July of 2009. They purchased the company for about 1.2 billion dollars. When nick first had come up with the idea to sell shoes online, his investors almost declined saying it wasn’t profitable enough. Now the online retail store has become one of the biggest show retailers in the world. That goes to show, never underestimate an idea you may think be profitable.

#4 – Endeca.com – Sold for $1.075 Billion

Year founded: 1999
Year sold: 2011
Endeca was sold for 1.075 billion dollars on October 18, 2011 to the Oracle Corporation. Endeca sells ecommerce search, enterprise search, business intelligence, and customer experience management applications. This international company has thrived over the years by providing ecommerce and other intelligence to their clients and were recognized as a pioneer in their industry.

#5 – Shopping.com – Sold for $620 Million

Year founded: 1998
Year sold: 2005
Shopping.com is a price comparison service that uses websites in 5 countries. Originally, the company was Dealtime.com and founded in Israel in 1998 by D. Nuhum Sharfman and Amir Ashkenazi. Originally it was a model to make a downloadable client that can monitor changes in price for certain products. Then it would notify the customer with price drops. That idea was then evolved and they were bought by eBay for 620 Million dollars.

#6 – Kelkoo.com – Sold for $1.5 Billion

Year founded: 1999
Year sold: 2004
Kelkoo is a European price comparison server that was founded in France, 1999 by Pierre Chappaz and Mauicio Lopez. It allowed customers to find information about products that they were interested in by including information about different prices and sellers. It was purchased by Yahoo! Inc in April 2004 for 579 million dollars and then was later sold to a private equity firm in 2008.

#7 – Half.com – Sold for $318 Million

Year founded: 1999
Year sold: 2000
Half.com allows sellers to offer items that usually have a ISBN, UPC, or other types of SKU. There are only a limited amount of categories that they allow on their but that hasn’t stopped their site from gaining massive popularity in such a short time.  It was bought by eBay on June 13, 2000 for 318 million and continues to thrive.

#8 – Stubhub.com – Sold for $310 Million

Year founded: 2000
Year sold: 2007
StubHub  is a marketplace that provides services for buyers as well as sellers of tickers for concerts, sports, theater, and other live events. It is now the largest ticket marketplace in the world. The company refuses to reveal its financial information, but they did say that they process a ticket it order every single second and had over 15 million unique visitors per month in the year of 2012. The company was acquired by eBay on January 10, 2007 for 310 Million dollars.

#9 – Hautelook.com – Sold for $270 Million

Year founded: 2007
Year sold: 2011
HauteLook is a flash sales business, which was acquired by Nordstrom for 270 million dollars in 2011. The business got popular due to its exclusivity of members only and online sample sales. High end retailers place their excess inventory on sale for a large percentage discount over a limited amount of time. They offer products for women, men, and even children.

#10 – buy.com – Sold for $250 Million

Year founded: 1997
Year sold: 2010
Buy.com has seen many ups and downs throughout the years but ultimately grew into a massive online retail store owned by Japan’s biggest ecommerce company. Rakuten, Inc purchased Buy.com in May 2010 for 250 Million dollars. Buy.com originally sold computers and electronics, but has since expanded into many other categories. In its first year of business it sold over 110 million dollars worth of goods and services, which beat many of their tenured competitors.

#11 -Magento.com – Sold for $225 Million

Year founded: 2008
Year sold: 2010
Magento is a open source ecommerce application that acted as a content management system for web hosting services. eBay bought the whole program for 225 million dollars in February 2010 making them 100% owners. In April 2014, it is estimated that Magento is used by 1% of all websites. Magento is among the top 20 most popular ecommerce platforms for businesses to use.

#12 – Gittigidiyor.com – Sold for $217.5 Million

Year founded: 2001
Year sold: 2007
Gitti Gidiyor is a Turkish e-shopping mall that eBay bought on May 3, 2007 for 217.5 million dollars. Consumers have access to all types of different products and are also able to sell whatever they want. It has evolved to replicate the main eBay website ever since it was purchased. eBay has been trying to expand their presence over the world which made this an important acquisition for them.

#13 – Eachnet.com – Sold for $150 Million

Year founded: 1999
Year sold: 2003
EachNet provides a similar service as eBay which is why it became a subsidiary of eBay inc on July 16, 2003 for 150 million dollars. It is an ecommerce company that provides auction services to consumers and businesses in China. The community is able to buy and sell a large range of items in different price formats.

#14 – Joyo.com - Sold for $75 Million

Year founded: 1998
Year sold: 2004
Joyo.com started out as a IT information service and download website prior to the year 2000. Shortly after, the company decided to become an online book store. One the company started to grow, Amazon took notice and decided to buy them for 75 million dollars on August 19, 2004. The name then changed in 2007 to Amazon China, making it the 7th regional website of Amazon.com. Joyo only had 5 employees in 1999 but a year and a half later, became the 33rd largest Chinese website.

#15 – Milo.com – Sold for $75 Million

Year founded: 2004
Year sold: 2010
Milo lists real time product inventory for more than 50,000 stores around the country. There are over 3 million products from many large companies and it is continuing to grow. eBay bought Milo for 75 million dollars in 2010 in an another attempt to get into the 917 billion dollar market of online research. eBay brought their inventories to Milo and also integrated local product feeds to its online market place and mobile applications.

#16 – Lexity.com – Sold for $35 Million

Year founded: 2009
Year Sold: 2013
Lexity provides ecommerce services and even has their own app store that provides marketing applications that are made to help online merchants drive sales. It was purchased by Yahoo! for 35 million dollars on July 31, 2013. The company currently focuses on creating mobile applications for ecommerce purposes. Founder Amit Kumar has been successful with similar projects in the past and was allowed to stay with Lexity after it was purchased by Yahoo!.

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