The impending death of eBay (EBAY) as the king of all marketplaces has been rumored for years. Every time management makes a change, raises fees or adds sponsored links, sellers say they will walk.
I've been following eBay since 1999 and I've seen and heard it all. Still eBay continues to be the 800 lb. gorilla of e-commerce. So it didn't surprise me when eBay sellers were once again on the warpath. Granted, this time the unrest seems less about fees and more about the changes to feedback; the perception is that eBay is taking away the ability for sellers to protect their business. In fact, during a conference call Tuesday between PeSA members and eBay management, I did not hear one question concerning fees; instead I heard about DSRs and Feedback.
Sellers are upset for many reasons, but in my view, many of them are concerned that they are losing control of their businesses. I believe if sales were great, they certainly wouldn't be complaining. (Amazon (AMZN) exerts much more control over their sellers, but they don’t complain as much because they are selling a lot of products.) Profitable sales are hard to come by on eBay and sellers are fighting very hard to maintain control of their business. The feedback issue is just a symptom of the feeling of helplessness. By not allowing a seller to leave a negative rating for a buyer, sellers believe the buyers will hold them hostage. This may not mean anything to those outside of the eBay ecosystem, but to eBay sellers, Feedback is their reputation and you don't mess with their reputation without a fight.
So, once again, sellers are upset and threatening to strike. I've never felt that a seller strike would be very beneficial; especially a one-week strike. The one difference I see with the seller unrest is that it's not just limited to one segment of sellers. In August of 2006, eBay raised fees on Store sellers but left Auction sellers alone. Earlier fee increases have affected one group more than another, but this time eBay has messed with Feedback, the most sacred aspect of eBay, and it affects every seller.
So what does all of this have to do with “Death by a Thousand Cuts?" February of 2008 is much different than August of 2006. In 2006 the options for eBay sellers were limited to Amazon and a few small upstarts. Amazon was just starting to expand their categories and open them up to 3P sellers, so there were not very many places to go. Today is much different; Amazon has expanded their 3P offerings, adding WebStore and FBA in addition to opening up more categories. Those upstart companies, that were around in 2006, have grown steadily and are much more viable this time around and paid search isn't so scary to sellers any more. Heck, they can even buy paid search ads on eBay that gives them more exposure than eBay store listings.
I came across a great article at Money.CNN.com entitled EBay rivals circle vulnerable auctions kingpin about the many options available to eBay sellers today. What was interesting were the numbers and trends these sites are seeing. Many of these sites saw an increase in registrations around the time of the eBay announcements. Sure, most of these sites are not seeing huge numbers in real terms, but the combination of the number of available sites and the measurable increases in registrations for each, begins to add up. Blood is in the water and each of these sites is stepping up their efforts to reach out to the unhappy eBay seller. “Death by a thousand cuts” just means that not any one cut is fatal. In fact it may take a thousand cuts to finish off the victim and all the while the victim doesn't feel they are in danger, until it is too late.
Lets start to counts the cuts: (Most data is from the article)
- “OnlineAuction.com, based in Grants Pass, Ore., reports that roughly 7,500 new sellers have opened accounts since eBay announced its new policies last week. That's a 15% jump in the site's user base, within a matter of days.”
- “Another contender, eCrater, has registered 1,400 new sellers within the last few days. That's more than double the site's average weekly total.”
- “Another upstart attracting attention from fleeing eBayers, San Francisco's iOffer, is built around a focus on friendly engagement between buyers and sellers. Sellers can transfer their eBay feedback scores to iOffer. . . iOffer has accumulated 75,000 sellers and nearly 1 million total users since its 2002 launch.”
- Another auction site, Chicago-based uBid, targets bulk sellers liquidating excess inventory. Its 7,000 participants include Sony (SNE), Motorola (MOT) (Fortune 500) and Dell (DELL) (Fortune 500). All sellers submit to a 10-point financial exam to ensure they're qualified to do business on the site: "That's part of our stringent anti-fraud stance," said uBid CEO Jeff Hoffman.”
- “… the auction site Bidville, which uBid purchased in 2006, does focus on what Hoffman calls "consumer-to-consumer" sales - the market eBay now dominates. More than 350,000 sellers are registered on Bidville, but 25,000 active accounts provide most of the site's 1 million listings, Hoffman said. “
- “Following eBay's announcement last week, the Overstock (OSTK) team worked through the weekend to design a new strategy highlighting its lesser-known auctions space, said Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne. The result? Overstock, in Salt Lake City, will redesign the header on its homepage to direct more traffic to its auctions tab. It plans to accelerate a software rollout that will beef up its auctions community message boards - and it's laying plans to produce 15-second Internet commercials to get the word out. "We think the time is right to position ourselves in this category," Byrne said. “Even Amazon has noticed an uptick in new seller accounts in the last week. Best known in its early days as an online bookstore, Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500) expanded into consumer electronics and other categories, and in 2000 began allowing third-party sellers to list their wares alongside Amazon's offerings. All products are offered at a fixed price.Today, 26% of all items sold on Amazon come from its 1.3 million third-party sellers, who range from mom-and-pop vendors to Target Corp (TGT) (Fortune 500).”
- And the cuts go on: Yahoo Stores, Independant WebStore platforms, eBid.net, Play.com, Etsy.com, Google (GOOG) Product Search, Google and Yahoo (YHOO) paid search and BuyBack sites are going after consumers who may become casual sellers.
Not one of these cuts will be fatal, but when you add them up they are beginning to drain the lifeblood of eBay, the seller.
I'm not predicting the imminent demise of eBay, but if they don't do something quickly to stop the bleeding, they may find themselves as just another marketplace and my guess is that this 800 lb. gorilla is going to weight a lot less.
Disclosure: none
