A young university graduate has launched a new auction retail website in Bermuda which he says will offer residents huge savings on new products, from travel and gas vouchers to smart phones.J Dominique Nanette, CEO of BermyBids.bm, said the “penny auction site” will offer new products that customers can purchase, or win, locally in a pay-to-play bidding engine that successfully sells at as much as 80 to 90 percent off. The site’s revenue mainly comes from the pay-to-play bidding process.Users pay 60 cents a bid, and the price of the item can only be driven up by one cent a bid, he noted.“This keeps the bid low and even with 1,000 bids, the price will only be $10, and the item can be a $2,000 flat screen TV,” Mr Nanette said.“We will work together with local companies to provide gift certificates for auction, as well as offering advertising spots. Many of our electronics and such will be imported.”The website launches on November 22 and is only available to local residents. It has all the relevant legal approvals, and is modelled after US sites such as quibids.com, where you purchase bid packs starting at $60 for 100 bids, which you can use as you like.Mr Nanette graduated from the University of Tampa where he majored in sports medicine. He is currently doing an athletic trainer internship for a local firm, but says he has always had a strong interest in computers and technology.After using penny auction sites in the US and enjoying it, he decided to put together a business plan to launch one in Bermuda.“It was the first time I ever have written a business plan — it was 50 pages,” he said.He worked with Butterfield to set up merchant accounts but opted for a private investor rather than borrow money for start-up costs.Mr Nanette said the retail community has been slow to embrace the start-up, possibly because other somewhat similar concepts before him had failed, but he expects that to change once they see its success locally. He says he purchases products for the site at regular retail price, but hopes to eventually work with more with retailers to get discounts on some of their items. He noted their items will be marketed on his site whenever they are up for bid.And he hopes to offer not only products but necessity items such as gas and grocery vouchers, which he predicts to be hot items.“Studied trends indicate that consumers are beginning to defect from storefronts to online shopping,” he said. “A recent study says that storefronts today are more and more becoming showrooms for Amazon.“Furthermore, studies show that consumers are using various web-based strategies to save money, such as downloading coupons, researching products, and visiting online deal sites. Our close neighbour to the west, the United States, is home to internet giants — Ticketmaster, E-Bay, Amazon, Craig’s List, and Groupon — among many others. Bermuda has already its own versions of all but E-Bay and Amazon, arguably the two largest entities of them all.”He added: “The latest breakthrough innovation is penny auctioning. It is essentially an auction where the winning bid is driven up by only a penny at a time. This revolution has the ability to save customers over 90 percent on brand new items.”Mr Nanette said BermyBids.bm will introduce “entertainment shopping” to Bermuda.“Its ability to save matched with its endless possibility of product variety make this an astounding development for Bermuda shoppers,” he said. “Items will range far and wide, from electronics, gift cards and certificates, travel vouchers, sports and recreation equipment, jewellery and fashion items, home and appliance, to motor vehicles and so much more!”Mr Nanette said the company has gone to great lengths to ensure customer trust and safety and has purchased the leading names in web compliance and security, namely Norton/McAfee and Symantec/VeriSign.“On top of having these household names attached to our site, we have gone the extra step, paying for extended verification, common in high security sites like banks,” he said.BermyBids also offers draw prizes and local deals pages.“Draw prizes will be offered frequently where users can pay $1 for example, to enter and have a chance at winning a $100 item,” he explained. “Local Deals will offer fixed price discounts from various local vendors only available on BermyBids.”In addition, a “Buy Now” feature prevents users from walking away empty handed, and with the help of vendors allows customers to save on items, some they would buy anyway.And BermyBids charity called C.R.Umb.S (Collective Resource Umbrella Services), will donate a small portion of every transaction on BermyBids to charity as well as having charity drives and more events. CRUMBS will poll BermyBids users to help decide where to donate.