Jun 13, 2010 By Herald Standard Staff 3 min read

The Herald-Standard, along with Ranger Data Technologies Inc. and nearly 300 local newspaper and broadcast partners in North America, are launching Boocoo.com, an online auction house. Each partner with Ranger Data Technologies will share transactional fees and promote the website on a sustained basis to help generate inventory, traffic and sales.

Boocoo.com will first be activated for heraldstandard.com Monday and the other media partners prior to a June 21 national introduction.

“We are excited to have the Herald-Standard involved in this new online auction service with local media companies across the country” said Val J. Laub, publisher and vice president for Uniontown Newspapers Inc.

“All of the Calkins Media newspapers are participating as partners with Boocoo. This is another new product that we are pleased to be able to offer the local community. Our readers and viewers can look forward to a great buying and selling experience online, but with a local flavor that sets Boocoo.com apart from the national sites. Our subscribers will get a unique opportunity to clear out their attics, basements and garages for the coming week and make some additional cash without paying fees or commissions.”

“Because of the explosive growth in Internet usage in the past decade, a new revenue opportunity has opened up for newspapers and other local media,” said George Willard Sr., the chairman, CEO, and founder of Ranger Data Technologies

“Boocoo.com was designed in part to regain revenue lost to online classified advertising and auction sites while giving consumers a secure and competitive alternative rich in local content,” Willard added.

The 11-year-old Royal Oak, Mich.,-based company founded by the former newspaper publisher is best known for its classified advertising software systems. As a special promotion for Monday’s media partner launch of Boocoo.com, subscribers and viewers will receive a user name and password that will allow access and waive transaction fees for a week prior to the June 21 national launch when fees will be waived for all consumers for a minimum of two weeks.

“Boocoo.com is an innovative and exciting approach for the local media to enter the e-commerce transactional marketplace,” said Kip Knight, a former vice president of marketing for Ebay North America, who serves as a consultant to Ranger Data Technologies. “I also believe sellers should be attracted to the site because it is value priced relative to other online auctions,” he said.

The Boocoo business model is based upon the licensing of ZIP codes to the media partners who will have exclusive rights to split transactional fees generated by the auction site. If the buyer and seller are from different ZIP codes, the media partners will share the fee. If they are both from the same ZIP, the partner gets the entire share. With plans to license all 29,735 ZIP codes in the country, already more than 20 percent have been licensed.

To log onto the Boocoo site, enter the user identification “heraldstan” and password “boocoorocks.”

For more information, call Joanne Hunt, Herald-Standard Interactive Media director, at 724-425-7232.