Today sees a new competitor to eBay open their doors: 20ltd.com. Their proposition is to only have twenty items for sale at any one time, although they do have a preview of the next items to go on sale, once the first lots are sold. All products for sale will be items produced in strictly limited quantities to ensure your purchase is special.
Great ideals, but sadly the entire site is built in flash which is enough to put me off to start with. Navigation is difficult and if you want to find out what’s for sale you’ll have to click into each item individually. Of course there’s no back button in flash so getting to the next item isn’t easy. This is a fatal flaw for any site, even more so for a site that wants to sell products to you!
People may find some of the items for sale questionable – A black fox fur double hammock (Item number 12) will certainly upset animal lovers! Others however, such as the £40,000 Hellcat motorcycle (Item number 1), are fabulous.
It will be interesting to see how 20ltd market the site, certainly search engines will have trouble with flash, so word of mouth and advertising will be paramount. Targeting exclusive desirable products aiming for a wealthy clientele might seem like a great idea, but isn’t likely to gain repeat buyers or a large number of visitors to the site.
