Plymouth, Minnesota – May 11, 2009 - The online classified service TikiWade.com released the recent interview that was published in the Prior Lake American newspaper. Co-founders Wade Girard and Bradley Brager were interviewed by the paper’s editor, Lori Carlson. The following article is unedited as it was published on May 2, 2009:
By Lori Carlson, Editor
Looking for a used car? How about some deer antlers? Two lifelong best friends have created an online classified listing service they believe will rival Craigslist – with more of a local focus than the international Web giant.
Grade-school buddies Brad Brager of Prior Lake and Wade Girard of Plymouth launched Tikiwade.com earlier this year, offering free classified listings for everything used books to real estate. The two are aiming for a Twin Cities audience and say they intend to make their shopping site “family friendly.
“From the start, we knew we didn’t want to have personals or casual-encounter-type listings,” Brager said. “We know families are feeling financially and personally unsafe about shopping online.”
The two first shopped their site to investors but decided to go “grassroots” after realizing some investors wanted control of as much as 80 percent of the company, said Girard, a Web application developer. “We re-wrote the site from the ground up,” he said. “We’re free, and we intend to stay that way,” Brager added.
Without pop-up ads, the co-founders say to make money, the site offers listings at a cost for area businesses. The businesses get listings that look the same as public listings. “It’s nonintrusive. The business listings are there, but you can ignore them if you want,” Girard said.
The company plans to donate at least the first 10 percent of its income from the site to charity. Brager and Girard have established a foundation to determine where donations will go. Girard said the charities will include Catholic Charities of St. Paul and Minneapolis, America’s Second Harvest, United Way, American Cancer Society and the Salvation Army.
Girard and Brager intend to build their business largely through word of mouth. “We’re convinced that’s the only way to do this,” said Brager, who said he puts up yard signs every morning and takes them down every evening to comply with city codes.
Brager, who has a business background and worked for Travelers Insurance for nearly 20 years, is now a stay-at-home dad who handles the business side of Tikiwade.com. He said the company will work to monitor its site for potentially inappropriate content. Though the site has a “flag” option in which people can report unsuitable posts, the company takes monitoring of site content seriously. “We’ve got the ball on that one,” Brager said. “If people use this site as we hope, it may get too big to catch everything, and people can help us, but we will take full responsibility for keeping the site where we want it to be.”
The company has arranged for a free class, “Shopping Safely Online,” at 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 19 at the Prior Lake Public Library, 16210 Eagle Creek Ave. The seminar will offer tips for maintaining personal and financial safety while shopping on the Internet. The Prior Lake Police Department will provide information during the class. For more information or to register, call (952)440-1783.
Lori Carlson can be reached at (952)345-6378 or editor@plamerican.com.
TikiWade.com, LLC. was officially formed in February 2008 as a classified listing service for advertisement of merchandise, real estate, jobs, and professional services, allowing individuals and businesses to market goods and services locally, regionally, and nationally.
Related Links: Prior Lake American