The Company was created from four separate companies – Auction Inc., Rotman Auction, Inc., World Wide Collectors Digest, Inc., and the wholesale and retail collectibles business owned and operated by the Rotman family. The Rotman collectibles business was founded by Steve and Leslie Rotman, the parents of Richard Rotman and Gregory Rotman, officers of the Company. The Rotmans have engaged in the business of buying, warehousing, distributing, marketing and selling collectibles and other memorabilia–particularly sports related memorabilia–to dealers, collectors, and consumers, since 1977. Rotman Collectibles expanded into auction formats in 1991. Richard Rotman put the auctions on the Internet in 1996, hosted on the storefront Website of World Wide Collectors Digest, Inc. Then in 1997, Richard established Rotman Auction, Inc., to solely focus on sports memorabilia auctions.
The Rotmans saw an opportunity to bring these businesses together to service the collectibles industry online through the Internet. In February of 1999 the companies were reverse merged into the Public Company SRAD, which then changed its name to Sales Online Direct, Inc. With this new public platform Sales Online Direct has begun its mission to be a company dedicated to the management, development and retailing of affinity channels covering all forms of media, bandwidths and devices. RotmanAuction.com, CollectingExchange.com are the foundation of those channels.
Most recently Sales Online Direct (OTC BB: PAID) acquired CollectingChannel.com, which was the centerpiece of ChannelSpace Entertainment, Inc., to further advance the corporate charter of becoming the dominant affinity portal for collecting in the industry. Merging Rotman Auction, CollectingExchange and the CollectingChannel into one entity will certainly attain that dominance.
CollectingChannel.com is quickly capturing the lion’s share of the $120 billion worldwide collecting industry through its convergence of voice, video and comprehensive data library into an online entertainment and information “mega-mall”. “CollectingChannel.com is like the CNN or Bloomberg of collecting,” said Greg Rotman CEO of Sales Online Direct. “They are out there every day, capturing the stories that make collecting come to life. Adding their interactive website to the Sales Online Direct family is helping us build an entertainment and information collecting “empire” based on giving people the information they need in ways that make it fun to participate.” The site encompasses television, radio, video webcasting, merchandising and a host of personalized collecting services such as auctions, chats, articles and expert opinions written by industry professionals, as well as CollectingChannel’s own staff of writers who research and write original stories and expert opinions on topics such as antiques, sports, stamps and coins for the collecting industry. Up-to-the-minute news articles and audio/video programming are then broadcast using both narrow and broadband streaming technology. CollectingChannel.com also produced the successful and exciting TV Series, “Treasures In Your Home: The World of CollectingTM”, which was the first nightly prime access TV series to be interactively simulcast in both narrow and broadband through a partnership between collectingchannel and Yahoo Broadcast Services.
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