New owner secures DealsDirect, TopBuy and OO.com.au

Internet Retailing

23rd Nov 2015

Online auction site, Grays eCommerce Group, has completed the sale of its fixed price retail businesses — DealsDirect, TopBuy and OO.com.au — to MySale Group for $5.2 million. 

First announced on October 1, Grays eCommerce Group told the market it has now received the initial $3 million and will receive a further $2.2 million on January 31, 2016.

Online auction site, Grays, merged with DealsDirect in August 2014, changing its name to Grays eCommerce Group (GEG) and listing on the ASX. Less than 18 months after the merger, Grays opted to exit the “challenging market dynamics” of fixed price retail (FPR).

“With success in online consumer retailing driven by scale, we have consistently said that our FPR business must continue to consolidate or be consolidated,” Mark Bayliss, CEO of GEG, said when the deal was first announced.

For MySale Group, the parent company of OzSale, the deal boosts its user numbers.

Carl Jackson, CEO of MySale Group, said the business has more than 16 million members globally, 8.5 million of whom are from Australia. “This acquisition increases our international member numbers to in excess of 20 million members internationally, 15 million of whom are Australian members,” Jackson said.

The three GEG websites have around 3.1 million average monthly visits, an email database of 6.5 million customers, and 512,000 unique active customers – of which only 50,000 overlap with MySale’s existing active customer base in the ANZ region, of 682,000.

“With over 6.5 million customers and 512,000 unique active customers, and very little overlap of our existing member base, strategically this acquisition allows the MySale Group to substantially increase the size of our active base in Australia which fits with our strategy of widening our online proposition to leverage our existing assets, being OzSale and BuyInvite,” Jackson said.

Founded in 2007, MySale is an international online retailer listed on London’s stock exchange with established flash sales sites in Australia, New Zealand, South East Asia and the UK.