ZoneTrader sold to California firm
Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal - by Mark Reilly Staff Reporter
ZoneTrader Inc., the surplus-equipment startup that raised nearly $65 million in venture financing, will be acquired by business auctioneer DoveBid Inc. of Foster City, Calif. as part of a deal announced Tuesday.
Under the agreement, terms of which were not disclosed, DoveBid would take over the business of Golden Valley-based ZoneTrader and manage it as an asset-management unit. ZoneTrader CEO David Gigerich would manage the unit.
DoveBid, whose history as an auction firm dates back to the 1930s, operates chiefly as a seller of surplus business assets. Today, it sells mostly over the Internet, and has made a name for itself over the past year auctioning off the wares of failed dot-coms such as Webvan, the defunct online grocer. It also sells off equipment from large corporations such as Xerox Corp.
The company has raised about $125 million in financing in recent years, and had 2000 revenues of $80 million.
When launched, ZoneTrader had initally sought to build a pure-play Internet reselling operation of its own. But after the technology markets crashed, officials shifted to an offline, software-based strategy. The company now specializes in services rather than sales -- ZoneTrader handles assessments of surplus assets for a corporate customer and posts them on a in-house corporate intranet, for use elsewhere in the client company, before posting them online for sale. Its clients include Ford Motor Co. and Dow Chemical.
Mark Reilly can be reached at (612) 288-2110 or mreilly@bizjournals.com.
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