Toy Collector: Future of Online Shopping in Social Media

eBay and Amazon may be the twin giants of online shopping but there's still plenty of space for specialist retailers with strong communities of buyers.

Meet Martingale, an alumni of the Digital Mission to NYC 2009. They’re helping to transform the world of buying classic toys by making things much more socially interactive.

Martingale belive that the success of traditional shopping sites like eBay and Amazon wil give way to web 2.0 specialist sites where the emphasis is on community and interaction.

The company has recently raised funding from some of the net's most successful eCommerce businesses, including OLX, an international calssified site, Mercado Libre the largest South American online auction site and QXL the largest Central and Eastern European online auction site.

This comes as no surprise to those who met CEO, Christain Braun on the Digital Mission, who managed to cram in an unprecedented number of investor meetings. A lesson in determination for other missioners on the hunt for funding.

Funding will be primarily chanelled into developing ToyCollector.com, a site for collectors of antique toys. It will be the first time that Martingale has married social media with this market. The web 2.0 special auction site will have a strong sense of community, category killer software to specifically target large communities and it will, in turn, bring the site inline with the big guns and give Toycollector.com a very strong USP.

Users can expect niche specific blogs, clubs, directories, competitions, events forums and friending systems. There will be a wiki-based catalogue for every toy ever produced and all content on the site can be filtered according to personal use too.

Robert Dighero, Chairman of Martingale is, “excited about having backing from a group bringing such a wealth of experience in online marketplaces as well the opportunity to leverage our networks in Asia, Europe, North and South America."

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Picture courtesy of Phil Jackman. Some rights reserved.