How smarterwork's Acquisition of BizBuyer.com's Assets Affects B-to-B Marketers

Many B-to-B marketers were saddened when the plug was pulled on
BizBuyer.com by investors late last December. The site might
not have been perfect, but it was a useful sales tool for
marketers who used it to reach small-medium sized companies
purchasing online. Luckily last week, B-to-B services
outsourcing company smarterwork acquired BizBuyer.com's
assets, including the name, URLs and membership list.

We contacted smarterwork's US President, Lisa Yarnell, to find
out what this would mean for marketers wishing to reach
BizBuyer's members. The acquisition happened so quickly that
not all of the details have been sorted out yet. However,
Yarnell assured us of the following:

- BizBuyer.com's brand is "absolutely" not going away. The
URL currently points to an interim page, which will be
upgraded in the near future. The site (and phones) will then
be cobranded with smarterwork.

- smarterwork is very interested in talking to any B-to-B
marketers who would like to work with BizBuyer.com on a
revenue-share basis as business development partners, or
simply as a "straight-line traffic feed deal."

- Cautious of members' privacy rights, smarterwork has asked a
third-party email facility to send all BizBuyer.com members an
opt-out message to see if they'd like to be transferred to the
new service.

- Yarnell is not yet sure which BizBuyer.com offerings that
didn't overlap with smarterwork's will continue to be sold;
however she is removing BizBuyer.com's $2,500 sales minimum
and adding reverse auctions.

- BizBuyer.com's larger customers will also be offered
smarterwork's account management services. Yarnell says,
"small companies want to work on our site. Larger companies
don't want to do that. They want an account management
service where we select the providers, complete the work and
turn over the whole finished project."

Interested in partnering with smarterwork and/or the new
Bizbuyer.com? Contact Yarnell at lisa@smarterwork.com or
203.618.1188.