page_title: Trade Me
section_title: Origins and early development
hierarchical_section_title: Trade Me / History / Origins and early development
caption_attribution_description: Sam Morgan, founder of New Zealand online auction website TradeMe, at Webstock 2008.
context_page_description: Trade Me is the largest internet auction website operating in New Zealand. Managed by Trade Me Ltd., the site was founded in 1999 by New Zealand entrepreneur Sam Morgan, who sold it to Fairfax in 2006 for NZ$700 million. Trade Me was publicly listed as a separate entity on 13 December 2011 under the ticker "TME". In May 2019 Trade Me was acquired by private equity firm Apax Partners for NZ$2.56 billion. Trade Me Ltd also operates several sister websites including FindSomeone, Travelbug, Holiday Houses and LifeDirect.
  As of 20 March 2019, Trade Me's website was the fifth most visited in New Zealand and was ranked 2,711th globally according to Alexa Internet. In a country with a population of 4.9 million, the Trade Me site has, as of August 2015, 3.7 million active members. As of June 2015, an average of 878,000 people visit the site each day.
  Participating traders primarily use New Zealand's banking system to settle payments, although Trade Me now offers sellers the ability to accept credit card payments by 'Ping'.
context_section_description: Sam Morgan founded Trade Me during the first few months of 1999, constructing the site while working full-time for Deloitte as a technology consultant. Within Deloitte, Morgan worked on Internet projects and supply-chain issues.
  During this time  he witnessed the successes of online businesses like eBay and Yahoo, as well as the disasters of the dot-com bubble.
  According to Trade Me legend,
  Morgan, then 23 years old, decided to found the Trade Me site when, despite searching online, he could not find a heater for his flat in Wellington. The Trade & Exchange site had a heater for sale, but held back listings for a week before publishing them online, and by the time Morgan made contact with the heater's owner, the item in question had already sold.
  Morgan describes the initial designing and building of Trade Me thus:
  "Some time later we were in a backpackers in Sydney and got evicted because it was overbooked. We went up to some backwater because it was the only accommodation we could find. Anyway, there was nothing to do, so that night I started drawing a data model. So it sort of started there really. Then when I came back to Wellington I literally sat on the couch and built the site on a laptop over a five- or six-week period."
  The site went online in March 1999 after Morgan pulled together as much funding as he could. It gained 155 members in its first week on the Internet.
  In its early stages Morgan humorously listed Trade Me for sale on eBay with a $1 million buy-now price. Though eBay withdrew Morgan's auction, the prank sparked some interest among New Zealanders who realized the potential of online trading.
  Trade Me developed slowly initially, because its founder had little funding to pay for the costs of hosting and of expanding the site. In addition, Trade Me initially offered a completely free service for both buyers and sellers, a strategy for expanding its member base at the cost of short-term revenue. With little money and time available to work on the site, Morgan made the critical decision to sell almost half of his new company to his former Deloitte colleagues, bringing him around $75,000.
  By August 1999 membership had risen to 3500, and Morgan could dedicate most of his time and funding to the site. The early strategy for Trade Me involved simply increasing its user base and encouraging members to refer their friends to the site. Trade Me launched the Safe Trader escrow service about this time.
  For a snapshot of Trade Me's early development see the Internet Archive's Trade Me archive.
  The running Kiwi in the Trade Me logo is named "Kevin" or "Kev" and his name can be seen by hovering over the site logo. Trade Me often change the logo and stylise Kevin to reflect major events in the calendar.
caption: Trade Me founder Sam Morgan at Webstock 2008
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