posted on September 30, 2002 04:08:51 PM
*scratches head*
Why is it, that whenever "Seller XYZ" has weak sales on eBay it's always eBay's fault and not the seller's?
Why does the Internet cause people to throw common business sense out of the window? Look eBay is just a venue for which to offer your products to the consumer, if the products don't sell, you adapt and find what does sell. It's Business 101 -- you adapt to the market and evolve your business to provide with the customer wants -- you don't whine about it and find someone to blame.
Some of the large companies on eBay don't have a clue.......but that's okay, the same can be said for a lot of sellers.
Anyway -- I do agree with this article that stores aren't going to do so well on ebay -- people are looking for specific items or specific types of items. You can't make money selling the same consumer goods @ a fixed price that people will normally look to buy from traditional retailer.
DUH!
People associate (in their minds) Yahoo & Amazon with traditional retail buying, so they'll do their "store shopping there"
If you want to sell the same item over and over again, you basically need to offer the customer a better price then they could get from an online (or offline) retailer -- and still give them the opportunity to bid on it and experience the thrill of winning. If you have products you can do that with and still make a nice margin -- you'll do fine.
Of course, you need products that people are looking to buy week in and week out on eBay, -- all it takes is a little research and elbow grease and you can find what to sell easily enough.
I sell the same products week in and week out and I'm doing just fine.
IMHO - in the end the companies that will do well on eBay are the ones that are going to auction off their own refurbs (E.g. Electronics) it's a direct sale, you're getting it right from the Manufacturer and if the Company manages their customer service end right, they can make a nice profit.
As for the stock - *shrugs* consumers don't decide whether or not to visit a web site or shop somewhere based on the stock price.
As for the rest -- the economy is bad, consumer spending is down, people don't have as much surplus cash and/or aren't as willing to spend it as they have in past years PLUS when it comes to some items, it's actually cheaper to get some things retail (At least in my field). So why bother with eBay when it comes to certain products?
I am constantly confounded by people who think that eBay should be immune to the maladies affecting the rest of the economy.
Case in point -- there are certain products (Don't ask which, cuz I won't tell you) that are selling for between 20-40% off the wholesale cost at large offline chain retailers. The economy is bad and these companies just want to get this stuff off the shelves....so why would anyone buy that stuff off of eBay?
This is Article is more about companies coming to terms with market dynamics -- people don't go to ebay looking to shop in a traditional online retail environment --- they go their to find something they may not be able to afford otherwise, they go there to because they want/need the item but want to be able to eat/pay the car note/make the mortgage that month. They also go there to purchase things they wouldn't be able to find anywhere else.
I sell a lot of consumer electronics goods to people who love in the middle of nowhere Arkansas and would have to drive two hours to buy it and pay more on top of that.
Anyway, this article brightened up my day, why? Because I know eBay isn't going anywhere, so I wasn't worried about the stock, the economic issues are affecting everyone, so I wasn't worried about that either. It made me happy because it should serve to get some companies off of eBay who are competing with me by selling their own products on eBay.
It should also get rid of some of the clueless small sellers, who aren't neccessarily in direct competion with me in terms of hurting business.....but are an annoyance due to poor service, weak supply chains, listing products in such a way that causes them to sell at a loss -- which hurts my own pricing, sell through rates, etc.
People need to stop whining about it's eBay's fault they can't sell anything and stop getting caught up in philosphical debates about making a few points off of shipping and start acting like business people.
posted on September 30, 2002 04:26:18 PM
"eBay does not operate well as a vehicle to sell large volumes of the same product"
Well, duh!... it was never intended to!
edited to add:
I used to go to an auction house many years ago where the auctioneer would auction off an item - say a bag of clothespins - then he would pull out ten more bags and as "who wants a bag at the same price?"
After a while (it was a weekly auction) the bidders got wise and didn't bid up the non-unique items, knowing there was a box full of them behind the stage.
Apparently today's large volume sellers are learning what those bidders learned years ago.
[ edited by capotasto on Sep 30, 2002 04:29 PM ]
posted on September 30, 2002 05:34:12 PM
If a company is selling new merchandise on ebay the demand is strong for a seller to do volume. Unfortunately, most large companies can not do that without ruining their distribution channel, and they want to use ebay to liquidate older merchandise. Ok, I've done that and it doesn't work. It's one reason why the smaller seller will dominate on ebay, and another why not to invest longhaul in ebay.
posted on September 30, 2002 07:49:11 PM
Most large sellers have already figured out that 52 Million Registered users = 7.5 million unique users.
Let's see wholesale jobbers work on 5-10% markup. Meg thinks the 7.5% take she is averaging on Ebay's sales should be raised to 10.5%. Only elephants are willing to work for peanuts.
