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Jason: And we are joined now by Steve Woda. Steve is the chairman and founder of BuySafe and Steve if you could, please tell us a little bit about what BuySafe is.
Steve: Sure. Thanks Jason, thanks Lee. BuySafe is all about trying to make it completely safe for buyers to buy from people they know very little about. We want to make sure buyers get what they paid for and that sellers get paid what they deserve.
Lee: How does it work?
Steve: Great question. We use what’s called a surety bond in order to guarantee the transactions for merchants up to $25,000 per transaction. We do that with Liberty Mutual, it’s a big giant insurance company, and we pre-qualify the merchants ahead of time and make sure they’re professional and reputable and that they’re financially stable. We make sure we can verify who they are and their identity and then we guarantee those transactions on behalf of them.
Lee: How does it work exactly?
Steve: How does it work exactly?
Lee: Yes, let’s say I’m a new eBay person and I’m going to be selling WWII pins.
Steve: Terrific, great question. A seller would come to BuySafe and go through our application, our registration process, and it’s called our business inspection process.
Lee: At BuySafe.com?
Steve: At www.buysafe.com, yep.
Lee: Okay.
Steve: And they go through and fill out an application that tells us a little bit about their business, themselves, and it’s a little bit like a credit card application. It’s not very complicated. It takes 10 or 15 minutes to go through and when they’re done with that and if they’re accepted we ultimately allow them to put the BuySafe seal on their listings on eBay.
Jason: And how does this work for a buyer then, who would see a listing that has BuySafe on it?
Steve: Great question. If a merchant is selling something and a buyer sees the BuySafe seal on that listing, first of all they should click on that seal and make sure that it’s real. That’s very important. And, it tells them a little bit about the seller, that they’re one of the best sellers on the web and that they’re professional and reputable, and that they’re…
Lee: Sort of like the Good Housekeeping seal of approval, only a little bit deeper.
Steve: On steroids…
Lee: (Laughter).
Steve: That’s the way we say it at BuySafe. But, for a buyer, they do everything else the same. Once they’ve verified that merchant is in fact a BuySafe seller they buy it just like they usually would, and if there is a problem, then there is a dispute resolution process on the backend to help them solve the problem, but the reality is that most sellers are very good at solving buyer problems, so…
Jason: So, their payment flows may be the traditional ones that are available on eBay? They don’t go through a special BuySafe checkout or BuySafe website to make the payment there?
Steve: Absolutely not, nope. They do everything exactly like they would. Use eBay and use PayPal just like you would. And, what we are all about is helping, in essence, to vouch for the merchant.
Lee: Is there a fee?
Steve: There is a fee. For the buyer it’s completely free and that’s very, very important because what we want to do is make it very simple for a buyer to make a buying decision.
Lee: Sure.
Steve: For a merchant they share with us 1% of the final transaction value and the idea is, obviously, if they can make buyers feel completely safe and less uncertain about a transaction, then buyers will pay more. So, it’s a win-win across the board.
Lee: So would you expect that more people with higher big-ticket items would want this rather than the tiny items?
Steve: Yes, that’s actually what I expected. I think PayPal does a great job up to, I think, $1,000 and it works very, very well over that. Having said that, you know, professional merchants are always looking for that extra little thing to make their shoppers feel better and six out of the top ten sellers in feedback on eBay actually use BuySafe and I think it’s because they’re always looking for that extra little edge and when they’re merchandising their product, they’re always trying to make people feel better.
Lee: Who came up with this idea?
Steve: I did.
Lee: It’s a wonderful idea.
Steve: Thank you very much. A couple of years ago I…
Lee: Chairman and founder, okay, Steve Woda.
Steve: Yes ma’am.
Lee: Okay, Steve Woda, chairman and founder, that’s who we’re speaking with of BuySafe.
Steve: Yes ma’am. And, a couple of years ago I actually bought something online and I didn’t have a positive experience.
Lee: What happened?
Steve: I bought a PDA, a little palm pilot, and it just didn’t show up and I may have been a little bit naive and I didn’t do my homework, but it didn’t show up, and so, I obviously thought about this a long time and really, at the end of the day what I was trying to do was create something that would be great for buyers so that there wouldn’t be that sort of a problem. I wanted to make it fun again for buyers. And then, for merchants, obviously, it doesn’t help when bad guys are out there taking advantage of buyers. It’s not good for their business either.
Lee: You know, Jason, I love this story, because lesser people, lesser mortals, would have just said, “well, so much for eBay, that’s it for me,” but instead, because necessity is the mother of invention…
Steve: Yes it is.
Lee: He is a true entrepreneur who said, “wait a minute, I have an idea, I can do something about this.” What was your background?
Steve: I actually was a surety bond underwriter in my old days.
Lee: Oh (laughter).
Steve: So, it’s funny.
Lee: You knew something about it.
Steve: Well, I thought about this for a couple of months and then one day I actually hit myself on the forehead and said, “oh my gosh, it’s a surety bond,” and I hadn’t really thought about the fact that my background would lend some assistance to this. But, at the end of the day, the concept of surety bonds has been around for thousands of years when two merchants were trying to do business with each other in distant towns and they didn’t know each other, what they’d do is find a trusted third party that would guarantee the transaction on their behalf and the concept was called suretyship. It’s funny how time changes and with the internet, all of a sudden, on eBay, folks are thousands of miles away and they don’t know each other and the same concept works really well.
Lee: Well, so you went to your wife and you said, “honey, I’m quitting my job and I’m going to do this.”
Steve: Yes, and she said…
Lee: …“Honey, I’m behind you all the way, whatever you want is okay with me.”
Steve: (Laughter) I have a wonderful wife who was very patient with me for three years before we ever drew another paycheck…
Lee: (Laughter).
Steve: …so she’s terrific, and I think what’s interesting about eBay and, certainly for me as the founder of BuySafe, everybody I meet is also an entrepreneur and it’s exciting and everybody has their neat little eBay store.
Lee: Well, you know, behind every successful entrepreneur there’s either a bunch of relatives rolling their eyes or there are people who will stand behind you and this is very important. It makes it go a lot easier when your honey is behind you.
Steve: Well, you can’t start a business unless you have somebody doing that, that’s absolutely true.
Lee: Exactly.
Jason: Is BuySafe exclusively for eBay or are there applications for websites as well?
Steve: Good question. Our goal is to, very honestly, help merchants bond transactions wherever they sell things. The reality is eBay is where they sell things so today we’re on almost a million listings on eBay which is really exciting for us. Our growth has been fabulous over the last year.
Lee: Wow.
Steve: But, we do support merchants in other marketplaces and ultimately wherever they sell stuff.
Lee: On any website.
Steve: Yes.
Jason: What I find that’s just amazing and it’s not just exclusive to Steve, but we hear stories from all over the show and some of our guests have launched last year at eBay Live and how things have grown so dramatically in just one year. You don’t want to say “overnight success story,” but it’s amazing how fast these things can grow into something so exciting and successful.
Lee: Now do you list everybody? Could I go on your site and see who has that?
Steve: You can’t go to BuySafe.com to see that, but we are rolling out in the next couple of weeks something that we think is pretty exciting and it’s called the BuySafe Bonded Shopping Network, and that is the bonded items that are being sold anywhere on the web. Now, the reality is that most of them are on eBay today, but the idea is that we can take buyers that love risk-free transactions and we can funnel them back to merchants that are bonding their transactions on eBay.
Lee: So I’m bonded on eBay, let’s say, and I have the BuySafe seal and then at that point when you do your new site, will I automatically be on that?
Steve: Correct. So, a buyer will come along to www.BuySafeshopping.com.
Lee: Do we have to pay more to be on that site?
Steve: Nope.
Lee: No, everybody who has that seal is going to be on your site.
Steve: Absolutely.
Lee: Okay.
Steve: So buyers can click through and then ultimately buy it on eBay, which is really exciting. In essence, what we’re trying to do is help our merchants find great value in their relationship with us.
Lee: Steve, it’s been a pleasure.
Steve: Thank you very much.
Lee: I know we’re doing a commercial for you.
Steve: Oh great.
Lee: For wsRadio which is very nice. It will be run on eBay and everything.
Jason: I’m feeling left out. Let me do the out.
Lee: Oh, do it.
Jason: Good-bye. That’s it for this hour. From eBay Live we have another hour to go so we’ll be taking a quick break. We’ll be back live from San Jose, California. I’m Jason Minor along with Lee Mirabal and together we’re filling in for Griff on eBay Radio.
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