Andale to partner with eBay
Arthur Peter Schram
Wednesday, September 13, 2000

Online auction services provider, Andale announced a partnership with auction giant eBay on Wednesday.

Andale's Honesty Counter service – a feature that allows a merchant to understand how many people visited his or her item-will become the default counter option on eBay's "sell your item" page. In addition, the partnership will create co-branding opportunities for the two companies.

This may be a new direction for eBay. Says Andale CEO Munjal Shah: "eBay has had a pretty rocky relationship with third-party service providers. So this is their real first step in terms of first saying that the idea of auction management is something that they're not going to build but they're going to partner with, and second in terms of saying that they're looking for best-of-breed solutions."

The Mountain View, CA-based Andale currently boasts roughly 600,000 merchants-or about 31% of eBay's listings. Shah expects that the new partnership will almost double the number of listings on eBay that use at least one Andale service.

Says Shah, "In the story of Andale there was always one piece missing-which was a partnership with the biggest marketplace out there." Jeff Jordan, vice president of eBay U.S, explained, "Andale's Honesty Counters will make it easier for sellers to manage their listings and help them sell more merchandise in less time with less effort."

The Honesty Counter technology involved in the agreement grows out of a major announcement by Andale in July – the company's acquisition of Honesty.com, which specializes in auction counters. The eBay agreement has been in the works for several months, and the service is scheduled to go live at the end of the month.