Elliot Moskow, 21, a junior at Bates College, launched Pricefalls.com in 2009 with Bates graduate Peter Schaefer. Pricefalls.com is an online auction site where the price decreases, like a Dutch auction, at a predetermined interval, allowing a customer to buy an item when they feel it is as cheap as it will get without someone else striking first.

A year after launching Pricefalls.com, Bates College senior Elliot Moskow has moved out to Las Vegas. He’s hired another Bates grad (that makes three.) He’s gearing up to raise capital for a marketing push after putting $400,000 into the Dutch auction-style site.

And he’s just as bullish on its prospects.

“Revenues are growing, traffic’s growing, sales are up,” Moskow, 22, said in a phone interview Monday.

Company CEO Moskow started Pricefalls.com from his Lewiston apartment as a junior. The Web site’s premise is a sort of reverse eBay: Goods start high and slowly shed dollars and cents to a predetermined — but mysterious to the buyer — low. Bidders wait for a bargain, but wait too long and it might be gone. There’s no fee to list items, but there is a fee, paid by the seller, if something sells.

The site has 1,500 account holders, Moskow said, people buying and selling. He’s going directly after small business, encouraging store owners to put up their inventory, and has signed nine so far in Maine, places like Haven’s Candies and Agren Appliance & Television, and more than 30 across the country.

“What we’ve seen is that consumers really like the reputation that businesses have,” Moskow said. “They’re way more likely to purchase with them and more likely to be comfortable with considering a purchase.”

The site had 100,000 items for sale Monday: jewelry, books, perfume, flowers for Valentine’s Day.

Jason Agren in Auburn said Pricefalls.com approached the appliance store a year ago.

“With these startups, it’s so hard to drive people to your site and make a name for yourself,” he said, adding that it has resulted in some sales. “I’ve been happy.”

Pricefalls.com has gotten exposure on FoxBusiness.com and write-ups in places such as the Chicago Sun-Times. Moskow said the company realized early that the site itself wasn’t up to speed and spent money raised from investors to update its look and technology.

“We think that we’re ready to make a bigger push to the public,” Moskow said. That will involve another round of raising capital in the near future.

The company doesn’t yet turn a profit, he said. It’s getting ready to take on interns and has five employees, including CIO and executive vice president Peter Schaefer (Bates ’08), marketing director and lead graphic designer Chad Casey (Bates ’08) and director of customer relations Ryan Rollo (Bates ’09.) The office is currently at 4525 Dean Martin Drive, where those three live, Moskow said. That’s looking to change soon.

Moskow’s father, a doctor, lives in Las Vegas and has helped with startup funding and space. Moskow said he loaded up on classes during the fall semester at Bates so he could move out and join the company. He’s only got one requirement, an art class, that he’s taking at a local college. In May, he’ll return to Bates to pick up a bachelor’s degree in economics.

“When we first jumped into this thing, we really didn’t know all it would take,” Moskow said. “We wake up at 5:30 in the morning to keep up with the East Coast and we go to bed at 11:30.”

That goes for weekends, too.

“We’re really all work and very little play at this time,” he said. “It is worth it.”

[email protected]