eBay's Home-Cooked Rivals
Kevin Kelleher
02/17/05 - 06:59 AM EST
A month after some of
eBay's(EBAY Quote) largest customers created an uproar over the company's decision to raise its listing and other fees, the dust is settling and the fallout is a little clearer.
The upshot: Talk of a mass exodus is proving hollow, as is a threatened boycott among sellers. eBay has made small steps at alleviating some of the pain from higher fees. Competitors will see a sliver of listings move from eBay to their sites. But angry sellers have hardly delivered a body blow to the e-commerce giant.
That's the good news. The bad news is that the episode exposes, or even enhances, the long-term threat that eBay faces from other sites -- particularly sites set up by eBay's own customers to compete with it. In some cases, eBay is proving an incubator for small businesses to set up shop online. Mom-and-pop shops may be getting squashed by the likes of
Wal-Mart(WMT Quote) on Main Street, but they are being nurtured by eBay on the Net.
It's unlikely that many of eBay's "PowerSellers" -- members of a voluntary program eBay offers to its high-volume customers -- will leave the site completely or substantially curtail listings. But they are moving from a world in which they sold exclusively through eBay to one in which they have multiple channels --
Amazon.com's(AMZN Quote) zShops,
Overstock.com(OSTK Quote) and their own Web sites for loyal shoppers.
American Technology Research, which performs no underwriting for companies, held a conference call with several eBay PowerSellers on Monday to gauge their feelings. "There appears to be no PowerSeller interest in leaving eBay, but there is interest in allocating incremental investment dollars to other channels, specifically sellers' own Websites," Mark Mahaney, an Amtech analyst, wrote in a report after the call.
Should eBay be worried? The company says the trend is nothing new. Hani Durzy, an eBay spokesman, says having its customers selling simultaneously on eBay and their own sites "is something that has gone on forever. We've always encouraged sellers on eBay to experiment. We're not seeing a pattern of seller churn or departure from our site."
eBay doesn't give out listing or other site data before the end of each quarter, but some analysts are seeing a slowdown in the growth of new listings. In the fourth quarter, eBay's new listings grew to 404 million, a 38% growth from the year-ago quarter. But J.P. Morgan analyst Imran Khan is forecasting new listings in the first quarter to grow by only 30%, to 424 million.
Rivals Overstock and Amazon have reported an increase in new listings since mid-January, when eBay boosted fees, such as 60% higher subscription rates for eBay stores and a doubling of listing fees. But at its analyst day last week, Bill Cobb, eBay's head of North American operations, pointed out that as of Feb. 3 there were only 45,902 auction listings on Overstock. On eBay, there were more than 58,000 listings alone in its category for "modern-age comics," or comics issued since 1980. "Overstock is actually understocked," Cobb cracked.
Despite announcements from eBay in recent weeks that it will beef up customer service, cut some insertion fees and offer incentive credits, some customers remain vocal in their protests. Some have called for a boycott among eBay sellers next week. eBay says it's not the first threat of boycotts it's faced.
And sellers would be giving up a lot if they abandoned eBay: a platform that offers a liquid market of buyers that is substantially cheaper than a retailer going it alone. eBay estimates it costs a retailer maintaining its own online store $913 to sell 100 books at $15 apiece by advertising through paid search ads. But an eBay auction could sell the same 15 books at a cost of $214.
Still, high-volume sellers may find that the economies of scale may make it worthwhile to sell on their own. Some of the PowerSellers on AmTech's call felt that by selling products away from the hypercompetitive bidding zone of eBay, they could charge prices that are 20% higher than what they pay on eBay.
For this quarter, the net impact of eBay's recent fee increases are likely to be no stronger than the ebb and flow of other short-term factors influencing the company's revenue. The longer-term question could be more serious: Are its core, high-volume customers growing more comfortable flying outside the eBay nest that nursed them into small-business success stories in the first place?
