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STARTUP DETAILS:
Company Name: EasyAutoSales
20-word Description: EasyAutoSales makes selling cars online easy for both dealerships and private sellers.
CEO's Pitch: The online automotive classifieds business is stale and it needs to be updated. As Internet technologies get better and distribution costs get cheaper, we do not feel it is fair or necessary to charge dealers outrageous monthly fees to simply post new and used cars on the Web. This is why our new and used cars listing services are free. Our main features include:
- Free listings with support for unlimited high quality photos and video.
- Basic inventory management for small dealerships.
- Easy inventory imports for mid sized dealers or large auto groups.
- Automatic inventory export to AOL Autos, MySpace, Walmart.com and more!
- (Coming soon) Social/peer online marketing features.
Mashable's Take: There is ample proof that selling cars online, in various venues of large dimensions - eBay, Edmunds, AutoTrader, Yahoo Autos, CarOcean etc. - is far less expensive than doing the same in more tangible ways, such as billboards and newspaper advertisements and so forth. But if you’re a car dealer or a private owner looking for even less of a financial hit when posting information on one or more vehicles for sale, EasyAutoSales, based in Atlanta, GA, may be the place to go. Free listings (ad-supported), after all, are hard to beat.
The way EasyAutoSales functions is basic enough. Sellers post various bits of data on specific cars, including VIN number, odometer reading and the like. The standard stuff, more or less. Other details can be written in full if desired. Buyers who then find listings, either at the EasyAutoSales home site or external places it publishes to, can contact sellers via email, phone, or a public comment/chat system. Visitors can also flag items or sellers if something or somebody is deemed misleading.
Design-wise, EasyAutoSales is neither better nor worse than its competitors. It’s relatively easy to navigate. It offers a good set of search options; the local filter perhaps being the most necessary and sensible implementation of all. The photo slideshow is a nice touch to an otherwise static presentation. It is effective for sellers for the fact that so many photos can be added, and buyers naturally can benefit from this. Really, the only seeming downside is its selection of distribution channels.
Auto sellers tend to consider the biggest sites on the Web, in order that they target the largest audiences possible. And while EasyAutoSales covers more than a half-dozen unique locations other than its own, they don’t rank among the top destinations searched. The current list of sites available to sellers on EasyAutoSales includes: AOL Autos, Local.com, Walmart.com/Oodle, MyRide, Vast, Overstock Cars, Google Base, and Military.com.
That being said, listings are free, so there’s little or no loss to be had in using EasyAutoSales. And the gain could well be a sale.