In a response to an overwhelming amount of fraud on the Internet, King & Associates launched UpperBid.com at the end of October, 2007, with the objective to provide an online marketplace that maximizes quality in products and transactions without the prevalent fraud found elsewhere. Their main focus has been on eliminating crooked sellers and preventing the sales of counterfeit designer products, bootleg media, and other low quality products. In order to accomplish this successfully, they have implemented a number of specific strategies. These include only allowing sellers who live in the United States, ship from the United States, and use a payment processing company based in the United States. Unlike other auction sites, UpperBid.com also will not allow drop shipping (where seller has an item shipped from another vendor) or presales of items they don’t yet have in their possession.
“Our number one goal,” says Robert King, President of King & Associates, “has been to provide the buyer with quality products that will be shipped quickly, while doing our best to ensure a safe buying environment.”
UpperBid.com may have actually discovered quite a dynamic business model. Having only been live for a little over seven months, they are already receiving 20,000 unique visitors a month (statistics from Quantcast.com)


