 | |
| Industry | E-Commerce, Business broker |
|---|---|
| Founded | December 14, 1995 |
| Founder | Marcus Markou, Andrew Markou & Nick Pili |
| Website | https://www.businessesforsale.com/ |
BusinessesForSale.com is an e-commerce platform specialising in the buying and selling of businesses. [1]
BusinessesForSale was created in 1996 by brothers Andrew Markou, Marcus Markou alongside relative Nick Pili. [2] [3] [4] Initially growing out of a family-run print classifieds business, the website soon superseded that of the magazine, 'Businesses and Premises for Sale; which ceased publication in 1998. [5]
By 1999, BusinessesForSale.com was the largest global database of businesses for sale, and spanned across 100 countries. [6] The following year, the company raised £1.7 million from Angel Investors, notably including Conservative MP, Francis Maude. [7]
An early 2000 technology column in The Guardian highlighted BusinessesForSale.com as a site “featuring thousands of firms for sale right across the globe”, citing examples ranging from a fish-and-chip shop in Lincolnshire to a wine factory in Hungary and a floating prison ship in Hawaii. [8]
A later analysis on AllBusiness.com, published in 2010, compared leading business-for-sale websites and noted that BusinessesForSale.com had a strong overseas audience, with “better exposure to international buyers”, and at that time slightly more web traffic than rival BizBuySell according to Alexa rankings. It also reported that BusinessesForSale.com was ranked number one in the United Kingdom and Australia for business-for-sale traffic. [9]
A 2019 interview with founders Andrew and Marcus Markou on SmallBusiness.co.uk stated that the site had grown to advertise almost 80,000 businesses for sale internationally, building on their father’s business classifieds magazine from the 1990s. [5]
In December 2000, the Evening Standard reported that Thwaites & Reed, a 260-year-old clockmaking firm responsible for maintaining the Great Clock of Westminster (commonly known as Big Ben), had been put up for sale through BusinessesForSale.com. [10]
In 2013 The Guardian's daily football email “The Fiver” reported that Scottish football club Heart of Midlothian F.C. had, after entering administration, “suffered the indignity” of being put up for sale on the internet through BusinessesForSale.com. The piece explained that the club’s administrators had placed an advertisement in the Financial Times, which entitled them to a free listing on BusinessesForSale.com as part of the marketing process. [11]