Tony P.

eBay: Not Everything Needs to Be Auctioned

Mathew, by Jove, you've got it! Too bad you can't convince ebay of these principles. Don't even try - you can't. That is part of the equation; their belief that *everything* is a Nail.

Maybe it's not a true belief; maybe it's more like an obsessive mindset. They must produce Growth - all of The Street tells them to do that - so they end up attempting to turn commodities into Nails. But that basically fails.

The commodities will naturally morph towards the regular retail experience, which was happening back in 2005, or even earlier. Ebay finally gets on board with that, but does so while trampling over the true Nails. Why?

The Nails market has a ceiling, albeit a somewhat dynamic ceiling, but a ceiling nonetheless. The scarce, rare and collectible goods can be found and sold, but only at a slow rate; a slow rate compared to a manufacturer producing iPods, etc.

Ebay simply is not satisfied with that rate and what revenue it can produce. Well, maybe *they* could be satisfied, but The Street is not. Ebay reacts to that by ignoring, or more aptly put, running over the golden goose.

They should have done one, simple thing that would have prevented all of this current turmoil AND kept the revenue pouring in: divided the site into eBay Classic and Newbay. When this scenario was presented, and rejected, they lost many good top execs.

The ones that remained - the current ivory tower elite - just knew they could make this work as one package. They just KNEW that, because their egos told them so.