History

In 1997 the website "Web Bazaar" was launched, which eventually became "Global Exchange Technologies" in 2002. At the time eBay was getting very popular, and our initial offering was a simple auction platform which allowed multiple sellers to sell their own items. There were programs that could be bought, but being programmers, we had to have it our way or no way. So we built what we needed.

It was an exciting time back then. E-Commerce was in it's infancy, and all you had to do was make a web page offering a service and people would find you. Our main website at this time was "Strictly Exchange". By the time eBay went public in 1999, we were already offering the auction platform to individuals and companies for their own use. Our phones were busy with people thinking that they were going to start the next eBay. If only we knew then what we know now!

By 2002 we were established as more than just an auction software provider. The auction platform was still the biggest part of our business, but we were doing more custom work for lots of different types of clients.

It was at this time that we partnered with Anthony Yockey, who had been one of our clients. With Anthony we created Global Exchange Technologies, and merged our two businesses into one.

It was a good partnership, but short lived as Anthony moved on in 2004. We kept the name, though we started referring to ourselves AS GLE Tech at that time.

Even though we had our own auction platform, we were also selling on eBay at this time. We were working with their very early API tools, selling sports cards. Most of the tools were run from the command line, but that would soon change. We like to joke that it is a rare combination of a sports card dealer that can write a program. It certainly served us well.

In the spring of 2003 a representative of a GE Power division contacted us about our auction platform. We ended up making a custom version of the auction software for them so that they could use it to run their year charity auction within their division. This was a great success, saving the people running the event so much time, and they ended up raising more money than they expected.

Word spread through the GE family, and since the first Charity auction we have done up to 10 in a given year for multiple divisions to this day.

By 2008 eBay had launched their Trading API, which was light years ahead of what they had offered previously, and opened the doors for small companies to create tools to assist eBay sellers. All of that work with the early eBay API come in handy.

At this time we also licensed the checklist and pricing data from Beckett. With this information and our eBay knowledge, we created an online manager geared towards listing sports cards for sale on eBay. We built in tools to list individually or in bulk, capture sales and manage inventory, and also work with a simple online store. This was early multiple channel selling, but no one was calling it that at the time.

The Beckett licensing lasted two years. While it was helpful to have the data that they created, it was also expensive, and by the time we received it, other new products were being released. At this point we began the task of creating our own sports card database. This turned out to be the right move, as Beckett stopped licensing any data several years later.

By 2014 the Control Panel had a good number of clients, but it had not taken off. One of the clients had been dabbling with selling sports cards on Amazon, and practically begged us to add Amazon as a selling channel.

That turned out to be the best move forward in may years. As we worked with the Amazon AMS tools, we integrated all of the requirements needed to sell sports cards, and then coins, on Amazon. During this process Amazon had a vibrant support team that helped us with our first launch of Control Panel inventory to Amazon. They thought they were just helping one seller, but when they heard about what we were doing they wanted to know more. After a couple of demonstrations, they were satisfied that we could help other Amazon sellers, and in the spring of 2015 began referring clients to us that needed help migrating from eBay to Amazon.

This sparked a period of rapid change to meet the needs of the new clients. Not only were they selling sports cards and coins, but also other collectibles as well. We quickly added the new collectible listing types to the Control Panel. We also built better tools to import eBay listings into the Control Panel, clean up the eBay descriptions, and set the Amazon settings needed for each type of listing.

This was the spark that sent us down the road to true Multiple Channel selling. Since that time we have added many selling channels, and are planning for many more.