Recently, a new penny auction has taken our close-knit Community by storm: GankIt.com

 

You may have heard the buzz about their new "GankIt 2.0" site. Shmuel Gordon, CEO of GankIt, promises to deliver mind-blowing results. Needless to say, the PennyBurners Team is excited to see what the near future has in store for the Penny Auction Community!

The PennyBurners Team has been in communication with Shmuel and Eric Berdinis, Director of GankIt, and we are looking forward to meeting with them soon, as they are also a Houston-based enterprise.

GankIt.com was recently featured in the Houston Business Journal, and for ease of reading, we have posted part of the article below with credit to the author:

"The serial entrepreneurs who brought Houston the dating site HoustonConnect.com are looking to hook up buyers and sellers on an online commerce site created this month.

Known as GankIt.com, the site combines elements of eBay and penny auctions. Here’s how it works: Those who like suspense can purchase a bundle of penny bids for 55 cents apiece and bid on items such as iPods, iPads and Apple computers, but those who want to purchase an item immediately can “gank” it — slang for stealing — without affecting the auction in progress.

For every bid made on an item, 25 cents comes off the manufacturer’s suggested retail price which is known as the “GankIt” price, according to Shmuel Gordon, CEO of GankIt.com. When a bid is made on a 32-gigabyte iPod Touch with an MSRP of $299, for example, the GankIt price becomes $298.75 including the one-bid discount. The more people bidding on the item, the lower the GankIt price becomes. And, whenever an item is ganked, another one appears, so many items can be purchased while the auction is still going on.

Despite its infancy, GankIt.com has already surpassed 300,000 views and is getting praise from penny auction industry watchers. Future GankIt features will include an application that will allow users to determine the real-time value of products."

(Hall, C. 2010, "GankIt Founders Trying to Steal eBay's Thunder", Houston Business Journal, 6 Aug.)

In interviews that the GankIt Team has given amongst the various penny auction sites and forums, the one common theme that repeats itself throughout is that they expect GankIt to "stun the market" and that they will be the leader in penny auction sites within a year's time.

Indeed, time will tell if GankIt will live up to their own expectations. In the meantime, we all wait with bated breath for GankIt 2.0!

To discuss GankIt.com, please go to the PennyBurners Community.