Louis Palafoutas (Goals)

I have focused my career on eCommerce and the auction industry and specifically on-line presentations. I have spent the last 10 years directing development of tools for both buyers and sellers. As the Internet changes so must my areas of expertise. Much of today’s efforts have to do with driving and managing traffic to bring the right type of offerings to the right type of buyer. As choices expand and the buyers become more sophisticated with their ability to utilize the Internet it’s my responsibility to make sure my product is exposed to the right traffic. My latest projects have included marketing campaigns for banner impression advertising on sites such as MSN, Bloomberg, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and many others. Other campaigns on Yahoo and banner ads on sites such as eBay via Yahoo. The latest technology is moving towards behavioral targeting in delivering your banners, how qualified can the site identify potential traffic as conversions to your message? They are getting very good at tracking this and it’s much more effective than delivering to anyone across the site all the time.

Other projects include natural search results ranking on Google, Yahoo and MSN (live.com). The processes to be submitted for ranking, the tags and content that reward your placement as well as link strategies.

A new and developing market is shopping feeds on sites such as Google Base, Yahoo Marketplace, MSN Shopping, Shopping.com and many others. These run as a CPC cost but also display to very motivated traffic. The goal is to develop flat files that are rich in attributes that reward ranking on these sites. Before selling could be as simple as listing on eBay but buyers have moved away from this primary site and look for shopping in safe comprehensive no hassle environments.

Search term placement is another option buying relevant terms for your product as advertised results running next to natural results. The three main sites for these campaigns are Google, Yahoo and MSN. These can drive considerable traffic depending on product type and budget but creating ads that convert the highest percentage of traffic to purchase is vital. It’s a constant “tweaking” of search term, title and message coupled with the appropriate landing page. Running multiple variations of messages and measuring response is important to keep the cost effective. This also includes demographic and geographic targeting and each site has different capabilities.

What makes me unique over someone who is only involved in eCommerce or just the auction industry is early on I focused on the two platforms working most effectively together. The Internet is the greatest sales vehicle to date and auctions are an age old proven process. They belong together and people who saw this and focused on the two environments working together understand the synergy of the two.

Before being involved in the Internet I learned very early in my career that most people want direction and look to leaders for the right choices in their work. I recognized I had a talent for providing this direction in a motivating way that brings cohesion to my projects and an atmosphere of teamwork. I worked through school in the restaurant business and in my early twenties I was a restaurant manager managing groups of 50 people or more, many much older than me. In this environment from the age of 15 to 25 I perfected these skills as well as my “people” skills with customers and employees both. In addition to restaurants my early years included selling products door to door before I was 18. This was another invaluable process in learning what people want or don’t know they want and perfecting the ability to sell.

At 25 I moved from Orange County to Los Angeles to accept a job as a gold trader in Beverly Hills at A-Mark Precious Metals. I advanced to the position of Industrial Marketing and opened an office in downtown Los Angeles in the jewelry district supplying gold to the manufacturing community. I eventually went to work in the jewelry industry for large manufacturers with offshore and domestic facilities.

Even though it looks like I move around frequently the reality is the people I worked with and for as early as A-Mark in 1983 are the same people I know today and worked with at Lipton Coin Jewelry, Tangible, Superior and Absolute Auctions. I have worked with the same small core of people some for 25 years.

When I bring these early skills to the 21st Century I feel I feel I am uniquely positioned for managing a group dedicated to the goal of creating on-line sales via auction.

The last 10 years have included a working knowledge of eBay at every level based on establishing some of the largest selling accounts. Every year for the last ten years I have created and run accounts that have accomplished multi millions in sales. I have been involved in sales of art, antiques, memorabilia, rare coins, jewelry and collectibles. I have close working relationships with all the major auction houses and authentication companies. I intimately understand the right product offered the right way on-line.

You will notice my company Vintage Roadshow has some over lapping dates with other work. This was created and then sold to Tangible Assets and run as a separate company. Later I bought it back and continued operating it until after I went to work for Superior Galleries. I in effect followed the CEO of Tangible Assets who acquired Superior and since we had run Vintage Roadshow back at Tangible Assets we continued running it as our art and antiques channel at Superior. Superior’s funding came from Stanford Financial who also was the source of funds for GoAntiques so we did many projects together on the GoAntiques platform. Interestingly the President of Tangible Assets was Michael Haynes the CEO of Collectors Universe the largest authentication company in the world. We remain close friends to this day and I helped get them established on Overstock for the coin channel.

Below is a list of skills and processes I have utilized through my career.

Create and develop integrated systems that drive and produce eCommerce transactions. Utilizing high traffic third party sites combined with eCommerce website and marketing campaigns including electronic, direct mail and media marketing.

I specialize in active direct relationships with principals of third party sites as well as all eCommerce vendors and support companies. I have an extensive back ground in brick and mortar auctions as well as all forms of electronic auctions. I posses an in depth understanding of the processes involved in bringing all these forms together to achieve total efficiencies and maximum results related to bidders, bidding and bids both online and off. I specialize in the systems available and required to drive traffic from high traffic sites and create conversion from traffic to customer and repeat business in a new ongoing direct relationship.

I work with and have knowledge of Infopia, Netsuite, SalesForce, Channel Advisor, Icollector, Live Auctioneers, ArtFact, eBay, Overstock, uBid, Bid4Assets, Property Room, Amazon, Collector’s Universe, Christies, Sotheby’s, Butterfields and many others.

I have an expert background in all forms of authentication and the industry standards for coins, jewelry, art, antiques, paintings and all collectibles.

Sincerely,
Louis Palafoutas