Mighty Ape

Mighty Ape, Ltd. is a New Zealand electronic commerce company, based in Albany, Auckland. Formerly known as Gameplanet Store, it is one of the longest running online retailers in New Zealand.

Founded by Simon Barton as Virtual Stores (NZ), Ltd. in 1999, the company began by selling computer and video games under the GameZone brand. In 2003 the business rebranded to Gameplanet Store (or GP Store). Over the following years the product range expanded to include DVD movies, PC hardware and music. In 2008 the company relaunched as Mighty Ape and began selling books and toys.

Mighty Ape has launched in Australia.^[1] In New Zealand it competes primarily with online retailer Fishpond.

History

Simon Barton first founded Micro-World in 1993, a small retail store in Mt Eden, Auckland, which sold Amiga computers.^[2] When Amiga production ceased, the business shifted its focus to selling video games. In 1995, the store was rebranded as GameZone. Several other stores were opened in Auckland; however this proved unsuccessful, and GameZone reverted to having one store (on Symonds St in the Auckland CBD). GameZone became well known for its large-scale product launch parties, including one for the original PlayStation.

GameZone created its first e-commerce website in 1998, allowing the company to begin selling video games online and cater to a wider customer base. The site was mostly developed by Simon Garner, whom Simon Barton later partnered with in 2000 to start a separate venture called Gameplanet, a gaming website which publishes video game news, reviews, previews, downloads and community forums.

GameZone began operating under the company name Virtual Stores (NZ), Ltd in 1999.

In 2003, GameZone was rebranded as Gameplanet Store (or GP Store). This coincided with the closure of the Symonds St store and opening of a new retail store on Dominion Rd in Mt Eden, and the launch of a new web site.

As GP Store grew, the product range gradually expanded to include DVD movies, PC hardware and music. While the e-commerce side of the business went from strength to strength, the retail store in Mt Eden was not so successful. In 2007 the retail store was closed, enabling the company to focus entirely on its e-commerce operations.

With the increasingly diverse range of products on offer, a new brand was sought that would fit better with the company's ambitions, and in November 2008, the business was relaunched as Mighty Ape and began selling books and toys. The database and applications running the web site had to be largely redesigned to handle an increase in the number of products sold from some tens of thousands of games to now listing over two million books and other products.

In early 2011 Mighty Ape launched a new feature called Mighty Ape Marketplace, which allows users to sell second hand items to other customers on the site. The used items appear on Mighty Ape product pages together with items sold by the company, but are shipped from the user selling the item directly to the customer. When a user purchases a Marketplace item, Mighty Ape handles payment processing and holds the money in pseudo-escrow until the purchaser confirms they have received the item successfully. This allows Mighty Ape to offer a "Marketplace Safety Guarantee" with a 100% refund under certain conditions.^[3] Mighty Ape takes a 9% commission on each sale.^[4]

Awards

References