Our story

The idea of buying stuff you've never seen, from someone you've never met, from places you've probably never been to was a foreign concept back in 1999 but one that Sam Morgan saw potential to innovate for Aotearoa.

In late 1998, Sam was working in a corporate IT job and on the hunt for a heater to warm up his cold Wellington flat, and found that the only option was to look in the newspaper classifieds pages. Once he found his desired heater he called only to realise that the listing was now out of date and not available. This frustration, combined with his knowledge of the growth of the internet, an idea came to light.

Seeing this as an opportunity, he launched version one of Trade Me in March 1999, building the site over six weeks. It was a website that allowed you to buy and sell items, but it was always up to date. A few weeks later he brought live auctions to the site after noticing their prominence on US sites.

“I wanted something where I could be a high achiever.” - Sam Morgan, Unlimited magazine, February 2000

The initial start-up costs for Trade Me totalled $12,000. Sam sourced the cash from various sources including credit cards and loans from friends and family. The first employees of Trade Me were his sister, Jessi, who ran operations, Rowan Simpson, who built the software, and Nigel Stanford who came on board as a designer.

Trade Me officially went live in March 1999, with four employees and 20 members, who were all Sam’s friends and family.

With a desire to make the platform work and for more people to join, Sam would letterbox drop, send emails and drive around Wellington in his bright green Holden with ‘Trade Me’ signwriting. After five months the site grew to 1,000 members. Fast forward three years and it hit 100,000 in 2003, and continued to grow every year. Trade Me went on to win the top award as the fastest-growing New Zealand company of the year at the Deloitte/Unlimited Fast 50 Awards in October 2004.

In 2005 we welcomed our millionth member and by 2006 Trade Me was the most visited site in New Zealand attracting more than two million visitors a month, with 1.2 million members.

Over the years, we've expanded into different areas with FindSomeone in 2001,Trade Me Motors in 2003, Trade Me Property in 2004, and Trade Me Jobs in 2006.