Big Businesses are small fry on eBay
Feb-2007
I have been quoted today in an article by econsultancy about big brand selling on eBay. See the econsultancy blog post
Take up of the eBay channel by the big brands has been slow and most of those who are selling have not embraced the channel. Here some figures regarding sales from some large brands who have eBay stores
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Vodafone – £0 – https://stores.ebay.com/The-Vodafone-Mobile-Phone-Store
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Orange – £15K https://stores.ebay.co.uk/the-orange-store
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Three – Sold about 40 items in the last month – very bad feedback – https://stores.ebay.co.uk/3-Mobile
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Easywatch – £0 https://stores.ebay.co.uk/easyWatch-store
Most of these shops were trading last year in moderate volumes, and whilst some battle on, most have given up the ghost.
The underlying problem with all these companies is the lack of integration of eBay in with their other ecommerce channels. eBay has been set up as a sideline, probably by the CEO’s son who “knows something about eBay”.
Another issue is that a lot of companies (e.g. Robert Dyas https://stores.ebay.co.uk/Robert-Dyas) don’t use any decent automation software, which makes it a lot easier to list in bulk (by having decent inventory management and also integrating with their current sales system). Robert Dyas is a good example of this. The sales are run by one person who has not got the time to load a decent number of Robert Dyas’ 2000 odd SKUs. Subsequently you get very limited use of the eBay channel.
It is high time that the big brand embraced eBay as a channel. With the proper process and software, eBay could be a major channel for them, schuh, for example, sell £5 on eBay ever year (https://stores.ebay.co.uk/Schuh-Branded-Shoes-Online )