Offering a global network of shopping all over the world, eBay is one of the most famous online shopping sites ever since its foundation. It provides a vibrant marketplace for millions of sellers and shoppers to conduct transactions every day, making huge profits year after year. However, the significant growth of e-commerce has introduced a wave of emerging online marketplaces. To consolidate its place in the harsh competition, eBay has to carefully revise its pricing policy, consider partnership, as well as analyze its rivals. Let’s dig into the details below to see what the company adjusted recently.
eBay Launched Zero Selling Fees
On 17th December 2019, eBay made an unprecedented announcement: There will be no seller fees (listing fees) for sneakers sold at over $100 in North America any more. Besides, final value fees (selling fees) will not be added to sneakers with selling price before shipping, taxes and fees is $100 or above.
Statistically, eBay is such a profitable marketplace which witnessed almost 6 million sneakers sold in 2019. The figure promises to increase since about 1.4 million sneakers are joining the current listings. More impressively, the company states that it takes just 1.5 seconds for a sale of a sneaker to be closed.
eBay Entered into A Partnership with Stadium Goods
Another announcement followed up is their partnership with Stadium Goods, a leading sneaker and apparel sales marketplace. This partnership was built with a view to starting off the “December Drops” series. The series act as a way of celebrating the most hyped sneakers of the year 2019. Sneakerheads should keep track of the drops frequently as they will have the chance to pay less than the market price, $215, for Adidas Yeezy 700 in its four release days.
Why did eBay decide to team up with Stadium Goods to hold this event? In 2017, eBay launched a program called eBay Authenticate to verify items’ authenticity. This program applied to a wide range of products: handbags, watches, jewelry and collectibles. However, sneakers were not included in the verified list back then and still not. The company completely depends on merchants’ good faith to list these items. Therefore, teaming up with a reseller owning an authentication system is a must for eBay to boost customers’ confidence in buying sneakers.
Stadium Goods is such a perfect choice for eBay. In addition to its professional authentication system, this marketplace was a part of several business deals with well-known companies. By this way, it became a reliable partner for eBay. For example, in 2018, Stadium Goods was purchased by Farfetch at the value of $250 million, which comprised of cash and Farfetch shares. Farfetch is a large online luxury fashion retail platform. Prior to this acquisition, this reseller also received investment from LVMH Luxury Ventures, an investment entity operating within the LVMH Group. Collaborating with sneaker experts has successfully proved to enhance eBay’s credibility. In partnership with Chris Holbrook, also known as Sneaker Jesus, eBay made pre-release of the Air Jordan 11 “Bred” sneaker sold out in less than four minutes.
eBay Evaluated Its Competitiveness
The temporary partnership with Stadium Goods is a strategic step for eBay in the context of fast-paced development of e-commerce. Examples of the expansion of e-commerce include resale platforms StockX and GOAT. They entered the online reselling business pretty later than eBay but have gradually taken market share. This has posed a new threat to eBay. Especially, GOAT recently expanded its listings to apparel and accessories, while StockX attracts more celebrity investors than ever. This can be explained by its unicorn status, expressing that the company is valued at over $1 billion. Unfortunately, StockX had to incur a security breach that compromised customer data last summer. This incident not only harmed the company’s reputation but also offered its rivals certain advantages.
Apart from conducting competitor research, eBay has been re-assessing its own position in the e-commerce landscape. The company expected to get more than $4 billion in cash from selling event ticket arm StubHub to Viagogo before early 2020. Right before this announcement came out, CEO and President Devin Wenig tendered his resignation from that role after four years. He took the helm of eBay after its breakup with payments processor PayPal.
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