Growth a done deal for recession-busting website
Fred and Geraldine Karlsson of DoneDeal.ie have posted 400pc growth in the last year
Thursday October 01 2009
THE owners of classified ads website DoneDeal.ie are having a far better recession than most, growing their business by 400pc in the last year and breaking through the two-million monthly visitor mark in August.
And husband and wife pairing Fred and Geraldine Karlsson reckon the remarkable growth can be repeated again, with their €1m-a-year site quadrupling over the next 12 months.
Founded four years ago after Swedish-born Fred and his Wexford wife moved home to Ireland, DoneDeal.ie began life as a part-time project for the IT workers who had used similar sites in Sweden. "We put everything in our house up for sale to fill it, and we had all our family and friends putting things up too, but very quickly it was attracting other customers," says Fred. A "year or so" in, DoneDeal started charging €3 per ad, marking themselves out from rival GumTree.
"It prevented non-genuine ads from going up, and we have a system where people can be charged for it through their mobile phones so they don't have to worry about security," says Geraldine, adding that the charge "didn't affect the site's growth".
Quite the opposite -- by June 2007 the site was generating enough of an income for Fred to work on it full-time, before being joined by Geraldine a year later. They added their first staff member in June, followed by two more in August as the recession made bargain-hunting and turning unwanted possessions into cash the new national pastime.
Along the way the Karlssons have made various enhancements to the site and also gotten into the banner ads market, making about 20pc of their 2009 income from big-name clients like Ryanair, Eircom and Vodafone, who buy in through Electric Media.
The duo try to mark their site out from other faceless internet sellers by making it user friendly and giving it plenty of personality -- when the latest two employees joined, their profiles went on to DoneDeal's blog, where hundreds of customers sent welcome messages.
Their efforts are paying off -- the August figures mean DoneDeal is now bigger than nearest rival Gumtree. But despite the mammoth growth, the pair have no plans for a dotcom-style sell-off. "We're really enjoying it, we just plan to grow for as long as we can," says Fred.
Irish Independent
