Hey, Nathan Holmquist here. I'm going to continue with the theme of having guest posts by experienced ecommerce sellers. Today, we have Kevin Harmon who has over 20 years experience selling on Amazon, eBay, and Walmart. He is the Founder or VP of four different companies in the Top 20 on eBay/Amazon worldwide. You can read more about his bio here. Take it away Kevin…
Ok fellow ecommerce sellers, everybody gather around the warm fire and let ole crazy Uncle Kevin tell you a story about the good old days of eBay….
I have spent over 20 years selling on eBay. At one time I was the 23rd largest seller in the world. We sold books, movies, CD’s, and video games under the name Inflatablemadness. We had 2 million listings and 750,000 feedback. Yep, I used to be a big deal and got to stand up in the huge eBay Live presentations when they wanted you to stand if you had over 500,000 feedback. I would walk by people and they would kneel and place their hands on my shoulder and whisper “Maud’dib…” (Yes, I’m kidding lol but the top sellers WERE sort of rock stars back then. Extra points for recognizing the Dune reference.)
The REALLY frustrating part about selling on eBay back then was that they were excellent at seller communication BUT that front line of eBay folks effectively had no power within the company. Of course it was because of my size, but I had an Account Manager, a Category Manager, a Trust & Safety contact, and could also get just about anyone else at eBay to talk to me if I so desired. I got to meet and speak with all of the upper level execs like Meg Whitman and John Donahoe several times a year to voice my opinions.
Mostly, though, I and all the other large sellers were in almost daily communication with eBay about something or other. That SOUNDS great, right? Well, let me tell you the problem – I don’t think any of their superiors listened to a word they said to them about sellers’ opinions of what was going on.
Here's an example of what I mean:
One year eBay was debating adding a whole new format to the site called eBay Stores. Sellers would be able to list all of their inventory there (remember we had 2 million SKUs). There was a huge debate over how much a Store Listing would cost AND how it would appear in eBay Search amongst all the regular auction-style listings. Naturally, all of us high SKU-count sellers fought for NO fee and good visibility in search and we pretty much convinced all of our front line eBay contacts it was the correct way to approach the change because eBay would still make money when they sold.
Then, eBay launched the Stores program – and made Store listings .02 each and INVISIBLE in regular search. Yep – some dark conference room full of MBA’s at eBay HQ quietly went against everything sellers were telling them and just did what they wanted to anyway.
Naturally, there was a huge revolt and uproar over this – 2 million SKUs x .02 = $40,000 a month upfront cost to eBay just to list the items.
All of our front-line eBay contacts patiently and empathetically listened to all of us complain and explain how dumb of an idea it was to them and agreed with us and promised there would be a change to the model. The next year, in a special session in a room at eBay Live full of highly ranked sellers who were all super excited to hear the new fee structure – they RAISED the Store fee to .05 a listing.
That was the beginning of the end for many large sellers on eBay, which only accelerated when Amazon announced they would allow third-party sellers and that their listing fees would be .00 . The first category Amazon opened up was books and so I was fortunate be in the first batch of maybe 100 sellers allowed on Amazon – you can clearly see how that’s gone for both Amazon and eBay, yeah? The second Amazon sales started pouring in, we ALL shifted our focus away from eBay and towards Amazon and as they added categories they easily attracted eBay sellers to them like moths to a flame.
To most of us large sellers, it seems as if eBay has always been in an identity crisis. eBay has ALWAYS managed to take me by surprise with their site and policy changes over the years (don’t EVEN get me started about their Feedback program). Many of them just fly in the face of rationality and can also contradict what all the other platforms are doing – for example, eBay is the only platform that charges upfront seller fees. It's never a SINGLE change. Each change, very slowly, brick-by-brick, frog-in-boiling-water, adds up over time until a seller realizes that eBay just isn't for them anymore and they leave the platform for greener pastures (Etsy, anyone?). In fact, of the Top 100 sellers on eBay that I was grouped with all those years ago, I can only count 3 that are still there.
Does all of this history mean I don’t like eBay now? Absolutely not. My Inflatablemadness Seller ID still sells books and clothes on the platform to this day. I can assure you that most sellers I speak with are rooting for eBay to make a comeback. Competition is always incredibly needed in ecommerce and one company – we’ll call them Smamahon – has just run away with the ball. Walmart is coming on strong now, which is great for everyone. Foreign competitors are stepping up their games – Temu and Shein for example. Heck, even Tik-Tok has launched ecommerce and is killing it. eBay is the Granddaddy of them all and I’d like nothing better than for them to make a turnaround and start comprising a significant percentage of my sales again.
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