In a move that further emphasizes the fact that local commerce continues to blur the lines between traditional and online retail, eBay has announced that it has acquired Milo, a leading local shopping engine that provides consumers access to accurate, real-time, local store inventory and pricing. The acquisition will enable eBay to provide consumers with access to millions of products from approximately 50,000 stores across the USA. Additionally, this will allow eBay sellers to reach more shoppers. Essentially, Milo lets consumers search the inventories of local stores online, providing a new channel for retailers, including eBay sellers, to reach more shoppers.

From the press release:

“Local commerce companies like Milo are blurring the lines between in-store and online shopping,” said Mark Carges, chief technology officer and senior vice president, global products, eBay Marketplaces. “By making accurate, real-time, local store inventory and pricing available to online and mobile shoppers, we see a huge opportunity for local retailers, small businesses and eBay sellers to reach more buyers, and for consumers to make more informed buying decisions.”

Carges continued, “Since eBay is an online marketplace and doesn’t compete with brick-and-mortar stores, adding local store inventory to the eBay marketplace is a natural extension of what we’ve been doing for 15 years – bringing buyers and sellers together to access the largest selection available anywhere.”

I’m interested to see how this will coexist with eBay’s local classifieds sites. There are distinct differences of course. On the one hand, eBay Classifieds connects consumers who are buying and selling to one another. On the other, Milo connects merchants of all sizes with consumers in their local vicinity (it’s a case of B2C rather than C2C). eBay has said it will continue to evaluate the best way to surface locally available merchandise of all conditions – new, used and refurbished – from any retailer or seller.

eBay plans to integrate Milo’s local product feeds into both its online marketplace and its leading mobile applications, providing millions of U.S. shoppers with accurate, real-time product pricing and local product availability inventory. eBay’s barcode-scanning iPhone application RedLaser will soon be available with the addition of Milo local results.

I’m going to have the opportunity to interview folks on both sides of the deal later today – including Milo founder, Jack Abraham – I’ll update this post with that video once I’ve had a chance to shoot and edit for you guys.

In the meantime, check out the full press release. Milo has also posted to their blog.

Cheers,
RBH