“Cebu Dealers Hub Eyed for On-Line Buy and Sell”

Call it eye ball place or what have you, a dealers hub in Cebu for on-line buy and sell transactions is going to be put up.

“We are planning to have a dealers hub where the seller and buyer could meet,” Regina Aguilar, OLX Philippines senior marketing manager for Cebu told the local media on Wednesday during a press briefing at the Quest Hotel and Conference Center Cebu.

Aguilar said that in Cebu alone, around 2,000 various second hand for sale items are being posted daily in their website which prompted them in mulling for the creation of the hub.

Normal transactions between sellers and buyers on their website would just agree on a meeting place to close a sale so the dealers hub which is tentatively eyed near the Ayala mall in the Cebu Business Park would then serve as the common meeting place.

From an erstwhile, business to consumer (B2C) transactions, the trend now is more of a direct trading among consumers called consumer to consumer (B2C) according to OLX. Philippines Chief Executive Officer (CEO) RJ David who also announced that the second hand house hold items around country if sold on-line would generate at least P21 for the economy.

David, the company’s co-founder in what used to be Sulit.com said that a survey conducted by NTS, a UK based firm that has expanded to the Philippines, revealed that the amount could be more in a year as the items are being stocked normally in the house holds from a period of three to six months before the same are disposed.

“We have 21 billion pesos in the entire Philippines, this considered as untapped wealth that is sitting around our homes and we believe in OLX Philippines that these are being generated every three to six months, why? When NTS did the survey, they said that the duration is an average between three to six months,” David said.

Of the entire amount, only about 9 billion are being monitored by their website however, he admitted, as closing the deals between sellers and buyers are just between private parties.

David, however, emphasized that since turning into OLX Philippines in June where they launched Yesss, Yaman campaign to attract additional one-million Filipinos to sell on line, it become successful as they already got more than five hundred thousand additional postings.

The OLX Philippines top honcho is optimistic that before the year ends, the one million target will be attained, a testament to its being the country’s leading buy and sell website.

As the survey bared, held between June and July to households in Metro Manila and Cebu, electronic items composed the bulk worth at least P10.3 billion (i.e. mobile phones, computer lap tops and accessories, appliances). It was followed by automobiles and motorcycles at P4.5 billion; fashion items (P3.4 billion); home appliances (P1.96 billion) and collectibles (i.e. sporting goods, artworks, books and magazines, etc.) at P1.3 billion.

RJ, along with his wife Arianne, now OLX Phils. Head of Operations, founded Sulit.com. in 2006 describing it as to have metamorphosed from being an experimental website right from their bedroom until being the leader in the on-line selling industry in the country.

The couple revealed they only had P2, 400 as starting capital to pay for their domain where they left their corporate and academic jobs when traffic to their site surged.

Meanwhile, to spice up their campaign, OLX Philippines tapped upcoming singer Jewel Villaflores, the Visayas Pop (VisPop) festival 2013 grand champion to perform the Cebuano version of Yesss, Yaman music video.

The Hilongos, Leyte breed singer recently finished her communications arts degree at Saint Theresa’s College in Cebu City. She won the VisPop 2013, the first ever Visayas Popular music festival with her rendition of “Duyog” which she composed along with her brother, Joe Edward, who also plays the guitar when she performs.