backLAUNCH OF THE WORLD’S FIRST FULLY AUTOMATED ONLINE BLOODSTOCK AUCTION SITE
multicurrency site completes first sales and attracts several high profile listings
London, 11th April 2008: The launch of www.re-offer.com, which is the world’s first online bloodstock auction site, has been announced. All auction listings are free with buyers and sellers only being charged commission on an actual sale where buyers will pay 3.5% commission and sellers 2.5%. In addition, sellers listing any horse within 30 days of that same horse having gone through the ring of a conventional public auction anywhere in the world can ‘Re-offer’ that lot free of all fees and commissions. This compares most favourably with all of the established bloodstock auction houses whose blended commissions are higher and who also charge entry and withdrawal fees.
Re-offer.com also allows users to place classified advertisements and this is proving popular amongst studs wishing to sell nominations to their stallions throughout the year. Top European Breeders Meon ValleyStud successfully sold a nomination to Act One through www.re-offer.com last week.
The new service, delivered through a fully automated multicurrency auction site, will allow registered users to buy and sell their bloodstock assets 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year. Auctions can be viewed and bids can be made in all of the major currencies of the bloodstock world. The site was exclusively made available to a specially selected group of European owners and breeders on 29th March for two weeks as part of the final user testing programme completed by Re-offer.com. During this trial period the site has attracted a wide variety of listings with over 50% of those horses listed attracting live bids. One of the horses listed is the high profile Storm Cat half brother to one of last year’s top European performers Duke of Marmalade.
www.re-offer.com is the brainchild of Valentine Feerick, who is a leading owner and consignor of racehorses. In the last 18 months he has been responsible for setting two new sales records at the 2006 St Leger Yearling Sale and the 2007 2yo Breeze-Up sales held in Doncaster UK.
Re-offer.com is designed to enable the sale of horses in and out of training, mares, foals, stallion nominations and syndicate shares. The site also allows users the option to download the pedigree directly from Weatherbys bloodstock database. Users can also upload pictures and videos of the lots being sold.
The main purpose of www.re-offer.com is to allow owners, breeders, racehorse owners and bloodstock professionals around the world the opportunity to liquidate their bloodstock assets whenever it suits them. Previously, unless completing a sale privately, they would have needed to wait until a suitable sale appeared in the schedules of the traditional bloodstock auction houses. The launch of www.re-offer.com brings liquidity to the global bloodstock markets at a time when the industry is grappling with well reported concerns about the effects of over production and the declining sales returns being reported by many of the established auction houses. At www.re-offer.com buyers and sellers can trade in racehorses, breeding stock and stallion nominations as well as buy shares in racing and stallion syndicates.
Nick White of Re-offer commented: ‘The recent increase in supplementary or wild card last minute entries reported by many of the established bloodstock auction houses is a clear indication of the growing appetite amongst owners to be able to sell bloodstock assets at a time of their choosing, when the asset may be at peak value, as opposed to having to wait until later in the year when one of the scheduled auctions is due to take place. www.re-offer.com hopes to fill this obvious gap in the market’.
During the past two weeks a select group of bloodstock professionals representing all spheres of the industry have been given an opportunity to use the site free of any listing fee and commission. During this period bloodstock assets with a combined value of over $1.0m have been listed for sale. Mark Weinfeld of Meon Valley Stud said ‘Re-offer.com clearly fills an important gap in the market. You have to wonder why someone did not launch something like this a long time ago! Within 24 hours of advertising the nomination we had several interested parties wanting to buy it and we sold it very quickly. We are delighted with the outcome and throughout, the team at Re-offer.com could not have been more helpful’. 7
The minimum price at which any horse can be sold on Re-offer.com is £3,000. The minimum price at which a foal can be sold is £2,000. A stallion nomination can be sold for a minimum value of £500 and shares in any syndicate can be sold for a minimum of £750 per share subject to a minimum of 4 shares being in existence.
Re-offer.com is currently in negotiations with a global sponsor for the site and an announcement in this regard will be made shortly.
For further information please contact: Nick Carthy at ncarthy@re-offer.com
Or by telephone 00 44 1525 864061