YahooXtra to revive online shopping portal

The portal was forced to close last month after its operator Hubsta went into receivership.

Telecom, which owns 49 per cent of YahooXtra, pulled the plug on its unsuccessful shopping site Ferrit last year after sinking tens of millions of dollars into development and advertising.

YahooXtra general manager Laura Maxwell-Hansen said it had been approached by several parties offering to power its shopping channel.

"We haven't decided who we're going to partner with yet and whether it will be an advertising proposition or whether we will plug in a brand as opposed to YahooXtra shopping.

"We're a start-up essentially and we may look to team up with an existing and successful e-commerce solution."

It was frustrating Hubsta had fallen over in the biggest retail quarter of the year and YahooXtra had also lost advertising revenue from the site.

The shopping channel had been clocking up on average 60,000 unique browsers a month before it went offline.

YahooXtra, which operates independently of Telecom and 51 per cent-owners Yahoo and Australia's Seven Network, had refunded customers who had purchased from its site while Hubsta was insolvent but before it went into receivership.

They were listed as unsecured creditors. Receiver Lance Gilbertson has said unsecured creditors – owed almost $500,000 – were unlikely to get their money back.

Ms Maxwell-Hansen said YahooXtra was one of those unsecured creditors and was owed about $7000: "The receivership came as a total surprise to us."

She understood Hubsta had been trying to expand internationally.

In May YahooXtra reported a 13 per cent drop in net profit to $1.37 million for 2009.