NZ reunion site sold to Britain-based pioneer

By ADAM GIFFORD

New Zealand school reunion site Findakiwi has been sold to British-based HappyGroup, which created the wildly successful Friends Reunited site.

Jose Luis Fowler, who developed Findakiwi a year ago in his spare time at a cost of about $1000, said the site did not fit with where his company, E-formation, was going.

"It is not our core business," Fowler said. "We are IT specialists and we decided we should be focusing on core technologies."

He said the company made a board decision to focus solely on Microsoft's .Net programming environment.

"Findakiwi has given us a steady revenue stream, but the size of the whole project was something we could never foresee and we were not in a position to take it further."

He would not reveal the sale price.

He said the site's growth was helped by a strategic partnership with Telecom Directories, which resulted in a link from the White Pages home page, and by the subscription model.

"We were one of the few reunion sites to charge people. If people pay for something, they seem to trust it."

Just over 145,000 people have registered with Findakiwi and left details of schools or workplaces. Those who want to contact former friends on the database must pay a $7.50 subscription.

Fowler said HappyGroup was approached because FriendsReunited was the most successful reunion site, with more than eight million people in its database, and it had a similar format, philosophy and subscriber-based business model to Findakiwi.

Friends Reunited founder Steven Pankhurst said HappyGroup has just started to expand internationally, so the chance to buy Findakiwi came at a good time.

"A lot of reunion sites have sprung up in every country in the world, but they only succeed when they hit critical mass, when there are enough names in every school year so people recognise at least one name."

Pankhurst said the Findakiwi name and pricing would remain. Jackie Gower, who ran the Kiwisreunited site that merged with Findakiwi in October, has been hired to maintain the site and handle support.

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