Saturday, May 3rd, 2008
eBay partners with Buy.com
I was having lunch with members of the PR team on Thursday and the subject of a new partnership with Buy.com came up. I was told I’d have information by the weekend so I could draft a post for Ink. Two hours after lunch, Randy Smythe of My Blog Utopia contacted me asking if there was any reason for the apparently sudden surge of Buy.com postings to the site. As you can see from his post, he has certainly done his homework and, for the most part, he sums it up very well.
In a nutshell, yes, eBay has entered into a partnership with Buy.com that will see them move all of Buy.com’s new and in-season inventory onto their eBay store in the coming weeks. Terms of the deal are not being disclosed publicly but the messages I’m hearing echo recent themes coming out of eBay presentations focusing on a better buyer experience and moving toward a more retail-like experience. eBay spokesperson, Usher Lieberman, provided Randy and I with the following:
“eBay is aggressively using price as a lever to improve the value and selection on eBay.com. Consistent with our goals, we have entered into a partnership with Buy.com to bring their new-in-season merchandise onto eBay.com. We expect to learn a great deal from this partnership and we will build upon the results.”
In order to protect sellers from being crowded out of search results, Buy.com merchandise will be limited to a single-listing per SKU and, even though Buy.com will be competing for eye balls in the same way as all of eBay’s sellers (through DSRs), I must point out the fact that this deal is “economically feasible” for both parties.
That said, I do want to address previous comments on Ink — and Randy’s assessment of it in his post (copied below) — regarding Pierre Omidyar’s recent indication of what he meant by a “level playing field.”
From Randy’s post:
I’m all for allowing sellers to negotiate volume deals with eBay, I had asked to negotiate my fees every year I sold on eBay and was always told “that is not going to happen,” but in light of eBay founder, Pierre Omidyar’s recent quote about “the level playing field” you can see that this announcement will not sit well with eBay sellers.Pierre said, in a recent quote from a video clip “What I meant by level playing field is that everyone should be given an equal opportunity….. I didn’t want to have sort of artificial barriers placed on newcomers and to have people by virtue of their stature outside of the eBay community somehow be treated better—special deals behind the scenes because they’re a big retailer and we want to get them to come on eBay, that kind of stuff. That would have been—is—a disaster. That is what I meant by level playing field.”
It’s my assertion that Pierre was talking about the conditions and approach to the Marketplace at the company’s founding. It has obviously evolved since then and it’s pretty clear that eBay has been, and continues to, expand and experiment with new pricing and business models on the site. Again, all geared at providing the best possible buyer experience. (I know, I know, there is PR-hack / kool-aid speak in that sentence… I just can’t help it sometimes).
I’ve been informed that we are not, at this time, extending the “deal” to top sellers and that any partnerships will be assessed on a one-off basis with hand picked partners. Personally, I think that top sellers that have put the sweat equity into helping make eBay what it is today - that have consistently provided excellent service for their customers - should be included for consideration when the time comes.
Cheers,
RBH
Tagged: buy, buy.com, buyers, dsr, ebay, ecommerce, Marketplace, online+shopping, online+trade, partnership, sellers
LegendsOfBatmanOn 06.06.2008 at 11:17 am Said:
Usher;
First, I want to let you know, despite you being paid to spin for ebay, the interview I had conducted with you, I felt you were a relatively decent person.
I say this, because you were polite, and courteous. Much more than I can say about myself.
But, I say “relatively”, because I could not spin for ebay, as I dont believe a word coming from the execs.
But that aside. I’d like to know how you are spinning the numbers with regards to Buy.
Here are the numbers. You can verify them yourself. The source is Terapeak.com:
These numbers were taken from Terapeak and are based on a 90 day history (March 2, 2008-May 31, 2008).
The most current info I have:
Seller: Buy
Total Items Listed: 2,708,987
Total sales: $3,924,907
Successful listings: 64,638
Total Items Offered: 249,431,285
SELL THRU RATE: 2.39%
Average Sale: $44.43
MINIMUM listing fee would be: $270,898.70 (based on the minimum 10 cent listing fee, AND does not include dutch auctions, or Final Value Fees).
Minimum fee, including dutch auctions: $24,943,128.5 Does not include Final Value Fees).
It does NOT take a rocket scientist to see what is going on here.
Ebay is offering Buy.com free listings to pad the numbers to demonstrate our boycott is ineffective. You yourself was quoted as saying how ineffective the boycott was. Based on numbers I saw, ebay lost a minimum of $2.4 million per day, just on listing fees alone. When we add in extras that were lost, FVFs, and store closures, it looks closer to $5, maybe even $10m.
I realize ebay generates a ton of money; which is why I am so perplexed by the greed, and the need to push out sellers.
There is no doubt that ebay’s owned shopping.com (and, yes, Buy IS an SDC company) is padding numbers and pushing sellers out.
Earlier this week, Buy had 44% of ALL items listed in Books.
What was even MORE puzzling is the fact that Buy cancelled MANY auctions at 1am, and many were “dutch” auctions, “because they were no longer available”.
I’d love to hear ebay’s spin on this.
Tim
[Comment edited: see Comment Policy]
SandiOn 06.06.2008 at 11:32 am Said:
and the need to push out sellers.
ebay has a problem they do not discuss for whatever reason. Counterfeits. They lost another lawsuit yesterday.
They are in deep dodo in Europe simply because of the way the court system is (so some of their actions are bizarre in relationship to US sellers).
They are losing alot of money in these court battles and European law holds a higher standard to ebay on this issue than other courts - and european nations have a centralized legal system.
ebay has seen the problem growing, losing more and more suits in European, being find, paying out cash.
Now the counterfeit issue falls onto ebay’s lap - they should have stopped the practice years ago when they were minor. Now it is a monster.
They have two choices that I can think of (maybe there are more but 2 are all my feeble mind could come up with).
1. Expend monetary resources and eliminate counterfeits on the site.
2. Remove private small sellers and replace them with major retailers who are less likely to sell counterfeits.
Which do you think ebay opted for?
DaveyOn 06.26.2008 at 10:07 am Said:
This great partnership with Buy is producing several pornographic listings. Apparently Buy also gets a bye on observing eBay policies that would get a normal sellers’ listings pulled so fast the T&S bots would break the sound barrier:
Here are the item numbers:
180258161717
150263326627
This abuse of the marketplace and double-standards are so against what Pierre said last month in his video interviews, it is clear that the videos were simply window dressing and like Pierre’s Values Statement, are being cast aside.
dimesOn 06.26.2008 at 10:20 am Said:
Speaking of buy.com, I saw one of its Howie Mandel TV spots last night and was amused to hear the VO “Buy.com accepts google checkout.”
Guess it doesn’t want to put all of its eggs in the paypal basket.
DaveyOn 06.26.2008 at 11:14 am Said:
Yes, I have reported, as have many others–so far no action. It will be interesting what happens on the enforcement front. Why Buy does not consider eBay’s policies up-front, I don’t know. Many of their listings have multitides of policy violations that would get any of the rest of us sanctioned, but I haven’t heard of any of them being pulled yet. For those of us who have had listings pulled when they didn’t violate anything, because some bot had no syntactical intepretation abilities, only adds to the burn.
I’m curious how many policy violations Buy would be allowed before being restricted?
If your kids were shopping for comic books on eBay, who would want them seeing this stuff? That’s about the time ebay.com would get into my firewall’s blocking filter.
pearsaabOn 07.15.2008 at 11:03 am Said:
i am a seller on ebay and i compete with buy..they will end up putting me out of business…a business i have spent extensive hours to build relationships and to make people happy..have you read a buy listing…if you want service x it costs — and so on..i offer the best service and fast shipment for nothing because i am nothing without it…you’re right when someone wants something they want it immediately and i have been able to make people happy by shipping things out same day for no extra cost…buy is just another big company who doesn’t care anything about you but they can beat me in price because i don’t buy 1000s of each item…what is going to happen when all us little guys go away…buy will have no competition and their prices will go up and their service will get worse..ebay has done nothing for me from day one except take my money on a monthly basis and now they just told me i am not good enough for them…there are honest, reliable and commited sellers on ebay who care about every order that is placed and i am one of those sellers….buy and ebay couldn’t care less about the individual buyer or seller so i hope ebay and buy get flushed with the rest of us small companies……….
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