eBay buys Tradera, Tradera.com is one of the leading online commerce services in Sweden, with over 2,5 million members and about one million listings (2011). Although Tradera welcomes members from all over the world, most are Swedish. Tradera was founded in 1999 but was acquired by eBay Inc. in 2006. Tradera was originally based completely on private auctions but today visitors can purchase both new and second hand items through auctions as well as fixed price listings.
On 24 April 2006, Tradera.com, along with its sister site Traderamotor.com, was acquired by eBay for 365 million SEK (about 50 million US dollars.
Tradera was founded in 1999 with Daniel Kaplan as CEO. The objective was to create a service to decrease the distance between collectors in Europe who wanted to trade various types of exclusive jewelry. It was originally intended to be a small project but investors became interested and invested in the company, which led to rapidly increasing expansion plans. However, after about a year in a luxorious office at Norrmalmstorg in Stockholm the company ran out of money as a result of the IT bubble bursting.
In the year 2000, the company switched strategy and acquired two other actors on the Swedish market, Bid2Day and Mr Bid. Jonas Nordlander was made the new CEO and the company managed to avoid bankruptcy, and ended up moving to a small basement office. After the restructuring a small group of representatives traveled around Sweden and met people in various collector communities. Before the breakthrough of Tradera many of these only met a few times per year in connection to a fair or similar event, and the demand for an online service was high.
In 2003, the company had regained its strong position and in 2004 it had about 400 000 members. In April 2006 the company was acquired by eBay Inc. for 365 million Swedish crowns, and in 2011 the member count was up to 2,5 million.
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