I don't know how much I can say here without it being seen as libel, so I'll summarise events as follows:
- The company was owned by family
- I developed an online presence free of charge in return for an ongoing sales commission
- The company was sold to a 3rd party
- The merchant bank account my payment gateway was hooked up to was cancelled by the new owner
- There are no signs of any interest in reconnecting it to the new owner's merchant account
This leaves the site dead in the water, which is a terrible shame considering how much time and effort went into developing the site, building up good SEO, and finally getting on top of AdWords with a bonus $1,000 of credit!
Just to clarify, the company EUROVIN (AUSTRALIA) PTY LTD, ABN 44 002 123 739, trading as European Wine Cellars, is a separate entity to myself, an individual software developer with a verbal agreement between myself and that company to act effectively as an online sales channel on a commission basis. I'm making this clear now because I do understand that as far as Google is concerned there is no distinction, so I was getting email enquiries from customers about orders they had placed with the company's face-to-face sales reps that didn't actually have anything to do with me.
Where to go from here?
I'd be interested in re-branding the site and re-launching with a new supplier. I need an ABN & liquor license, but I own the domain name europeanwine.com.au and the actual site itself. Preferably, the supplier would have a warehouse in Australia, and would be able to "drop ship" directly to the customer. I don't have warehouse facilities, and aren't interested in purchasing inventory, but if you have european wines you'd like to shift online to Australian customers through an online cash register that's open 24/7, drop me a line!
Alternatively, if you're an Australian wine producer looking for a web presence, I have built back-end inventory management into the site you may be interested in. Again, the wine would have to ship directly from your warehouse, but I could provide the means of taking the orders, depositing the funds directly into your account, and tracking inventory and delivery status with the possibility for Australia Post eParcel integration (which I had started, but not completed). It wouldn't be through the current site, but rather your own branded site under your name.
So if any of this interests you, or you know anyone who may be interested, please contact me, Mark Beattie, at: beattie dot mark at gmail dot com. (beattie . mark @ gmail . com - Gmail's SPAM filters are pretty good, but no sense in tempting fate))
cheers!
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