Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet the co-founder and CEO of Priceminister. com has a lot of celebrate. He just turned 30, completed his second acquisition last week and already has a success story behind him. Price Minister has 52 million products on line which makes it the largest marketplace in Europe in terms of products available, 10 times bigger than E-Bay according to Pierre (but smaller in traffic). In France, they have 5.9 million members, 1 million Unique Vistors / day, make 20 000 sales per day. They are competing against classified and e-commerce sites with a unique positioning. One of the interesting explanations to his success was that he launched just after the 2001 bubble on a C2C segment where US companies dominated and nobody wanted to enter.
Acceleration through acquisitions
In Germany, Home of Hardware, which sells consumer electronics, has been acquired by Premiere, a pay TV broadcaster. In France, Priceminister has recently completed 2 acquisitions. In March 2007, they expanded to cars’ ad classified ads : 123auto.com, autoevasion.com and many more sites. In May 2007 they expanded to realestate through a takeover of “A Vendre A Louer” : www.avendrealouer.fr, www.lesiteimmobilier.com and www.123immo.com.
Development plans
Pierre wants to strenghten its international develomment.Only 5% of their members come from outside of France. They launched Spain in november 2006. Priceminiter.com aims to get listed on Eurolist early 2008.
This 3i investment is followed by Jean David Chamborebon.
Pierre_ Kosciusko-Morizet, Founder and CEO of Price Minister, interviewed on May 3rd, 2007 (in English)