Honesty.com merges with Andale
July 18, 2000

NORTHBROOK, Ill. and MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., July 17 (dbusiness.com) – Getting some attention on a giant online auction site like eBay or Amazon.com can be a daunting task even for the most experienced advertising guru. Two of the companies that help small businesses and individuals meet that challenge, Andale Inc. and Honesty.com, just joined forces.

Andale works with small businesses and business-to-business customers to place and track ads on online auction sites. Honesty.com does the same for individuals and first-time sellers. Together, they will be responsible for 31 percent of the ads seen on major auction sites.

"Together we offer a platform of services for sellers at any level," Mary Camarata, director of corporate communications for Andale, told dbusiness.com. "Honesty will work with part-time or new sellers while Andale offers the services needed by businesses."

The combined company will keep the Andale name. However, they will maintain separate offices in Chicago and California. In addition, Andale and Honesty.com will remain separate brand names with separate Websites.

Combined, the companies will be working with about 600,000 registered sellers to move about $1.7 billion in merchandise each year.

The company will have $63 million in venture capital financing to work with. The bulk of that money comes from Andale, while only about $1 million comes from Honesty.com. Andale's investors include Bowman Capital, Accel, Mohr Davidow and Texas Pacific Group.

Honesty.com was founded in March 1999 to help first-time sellers place successful ads on auction sites. In addition to helping clients put together an ad, Honesty.com hosts image files and offers a hit counter, which can generate buyer interest with high traffic numbers. Honesty.com's services are free; the company generates revenue through advertising on the site.

Honesty.com also hosts the Online Traders Web Alliance, an online forum for auction sellers offering tips, educational seminars and networking events.

Andale was founded in July last year to help companies with business-to-business sales on auction sites. In addition to the type of ad generation services offered by Honesty.com, Andale provides software to track ad activity and manage an auction business. With an ad placed using Andale's software, sales are automatically recorded on a company's balance sheets, for example. In addition, the Andale software can process transactions. Andale gets paid 2.95 percent of every sale.

AVCOM, Sun Microsystems' largest hardware reseller, uses Andale's software to place ads on eBay.

Andale has 120 employees and Honesty.com has 30.