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Biddeford, Maine, Partners Highlight Weirdest eBay Auctions on New Web Site

Posted on: Friday, 8 July 2005, 18:00 CDT

Jul. 8--BIDDEFORD -- Need a Barbie done up for the bingo parlor, complete with teased hair, big glasses and a cigarette dangling from her tiny lips?

How about a sandwich bag full of grass clippings from former President Bush's Kennebunkport estate at Walker's Point?

How about the key and hood ornament from a scrapped car -- complete with the bad karma that went along with said vehicle?

If these oddities aren't your bag, don't worry -- someone will buy them.

Mark Greenlaw of Biddeford and his business partner, Chaz Kraynak of Laureldale, Pa., are banking on America's penchant for novelty (and for buying stuff) for the success of their new venture, the Web site weirdebay.com.

The doll, grass and car parts were all featured weirdebay.com auctions on a recent day. The site basically acts as a one-stop shop for purveyors of the weird. The site doesn't run auctions, but rather aggregates the weirdest of the weird from online auction house eBay. Greenlaw and Kraynak scan eBay auctions and also review up to 40 submissions a day from folks looking to promote their eBay offerings on weirdebay.com.

But be warned, Kraynak and Greenlaw are connoisseurs of the bizarre, and they have certain standards.

"If they don't make us go 'wow,' we're not going to add them," said Greenlaw.

Some things that once were weird aren't any longer, for instance. Slices of toast with images of Michael Jackson scratched into them are now passé. So too is offering advertising tattooed onto body parts.

The story behind weirdebay.com is, well, weird.

Greenlaw, 25, dropped out of Biddeford High School at 18 when he and his girlfriend had their first child. He's since gotten his general equivalency diploma; he and his girlfriend are engaged and now have three children.

A self-described computer geek, Greenlaw has had various jobs over the past few years, including trying to do Web site hosting, working as a security guard and making deliveries and cooking for Saco House of Pizza.

But in his online journeys, Greenlaw was constantly drawn to the amount of money people were willing to drop on odd auctions -- $30,000 for the first person who sold a company ad space on a person's chest, for instance. On impulse, he found that the Web site "weirdebay.com" was not owned. He bought the domain and space on the Internet for $8.

He talked to his friend, Kraynak, whom he's never met physically (they met in an AOL chatroom), and they decided to partner to launch the site.

They uploaded the free Web site templates that allow for banner advertising, online submission forms, chat portal, news sections and other features, and began trolling eBay for odd auctions.

The site is basically break-even; they haven't invested much more than time, but they are selling some banner ads for online casinos and other Web-based businesses. They also charge nominal fees to feature certain auctions more prominently.

They've gotten some notice. Do a Google search for "weird eBay," and weirdebay.com is among the top 10 sites found. Kraynak, a candle salesman by day, said the site gets a few thousand hits a day and got close to a million on one day when someone from a past "Survivor" television show had an auction for a date on the site.

Greenlaw said he's sure that eBay is aware of the site. Listing the eBay auctions on weirdebay.com is legal, he asserted, but a legal battle may ensue over the name of the site. Several calls to eBay's public relations office weren't returned.

But the fact remains that Kraynak and Greenlaw are basically tapping into people's need to spend money in what could be considered a frivolous way.

Asked if he thought this was a corollary of P.T. Barnum's famous line, "There's a sucker born every minute," Greenlaw said, "Most definitely."

"Anybody will buy anything," he said.

Bingo Barbie, for instance, had eight bidders on Thursday and was up to $10.50. The grass and car parts were both early in their auctions and had no bids. A recent eBay auction featured on the weird site, a lunch with billionaire investor Warren Buffett, went for $351,100, with 110 bidders.

People have sold ghosts on eBay. A gum wrapper went for more than $100.

Greenlaw himself sold a "ghost trap" on eBay for $220 -- it was a shoebox with a light bulb attached. And if the buyer really needs to catch a ghost and the trap doesn't work?

"It became damaged when I shipped it," Greenlaw said, smiling.

But he added, seriously, that people are buying the novelty, the story.

They're not buying a ghost trap, but a conversation piece.

"You're not sitting there looking at it and saying 'wow, this is real,' " he said.

The fact that two guys have come up with such an enterprise didn't surprise Nancy Artz, associate professor of marketing at the University of Southern Maine. After all, said Artz, "this is eBay America."

"We have become a consumer society. The idea of purchasing something where its functional value is its primary purpose -- that was decades ago," said Artz. "There's still some things we purchase for purely functional reasons, but most things we are purchasing for (their) symbolic value or some other aspect that's fun."

One of the major marketing trends today is experiential marketing. What the object is is secondary -- at least. People are selling the experience.

"Buying this funky object isn't so much about the object itself, but it's the fun of participating in the auction, the fun of procurement, the fun of after the fact, now that you own it, being able to chat about it," said Artz. "There's a currency in popular culture that shows that you're hip or cool. EBay is now firmly established in our pop culture, and you can be part of the experience. They're buying the novelty, the story, the experience, the affective experience. It's fun to buy that, it's fun to talk about it, it makes people smile."

The downsides of being a consumer culture include the fact that our society has very high debt levels, low savings levels and significant numbers of Americans who are addicted to shopping, said Artz. And while shoppers do get a rush of pleasure when they score an item, the question remains as to whether they're truly happy, she added.

For now, Greenlaw and Kraynak are hoping their site gains in popularity and that ad sales become more lucrative as a result. Greenlaw recently left his job at the pizza shop to become a junior partner in a new venture in Biddeford, a variety store/eBay shop, where people can bring their goods to be sold on the auction site, for a percentage of the sale.

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Copyright (c) 2005, Portland Press Herald, Maine

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MAT, EBAY, TWX, GOOG,

Source: Portland Press Herald

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