Will specialized auction sites deliver a fatal blow to eBay?

[mandy]

From Randy Smythe (GlacierBayDVD):

UK-based Mobile Phone Retailer, Carphone Warehouse, has just launched its new mobile phone auction site, mymobileauction.com. Should eBay be worried? They were mentioned in the press release. At first blush, of course not, it’s just another company trying to get into the auction business. They are only concentrating on Mobile Phones so to eBay they aren’t any real competition, right? Well, that’s what I thought at first, then I looked at this a little closer. According to their website, Carphone Warehouse is Europe's leading independent retailer of mobile phones and services, with over 1,400 stores in 10 countries. They obviously know their marketplace so they can target their marketing and avoid spending too much on advertising. How many Google adwords do they need to buy 200 – 300? They are big in Europe where eBay auctions are still growing except for Germany. So, while they are not major competition for eBay’s worldwide business they may be solid competition for eBay’s mobile phone business in the UK and the rest of Europe...

full article: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article...ction.html

[mandy]

A followup article by Randy:

It is my firm belief that eBay has and will maintain control of the Worldwide Online Auction business, so would-be competitors should learn from the likes of Amazon, Yahoo and Overstock.com and not focus on the Auction biz. Rather, they should follow the StubHub model and compete in an underserved category on eBay or if they are well financed they should attack the eBay Stores business segment, which eBay can't seem to figure out. There are 500,000 eBay Stores/Shops worldwide and eBay is “pissing off” those sellers on a daily basis

Many of the 500,000 sellers would leave completely if a well-healed competitor would dare to challenge eBay in this space. Stores are the most vulnerable area on eBay at this time but it's going to take a big guy to wrestle that business away from them...

full article: http://rksmythe.blogspot.com/2007/04/how...place.html

[sneakymagenta]

Rather, they should follow the StubHub model and compete in an underserved category on eBay or if they are well financed they should attack the eBay Stores business segment, which eBay can't seem to figure out.

Etsy had the right idea about how to create an Ebay alternative.  Wagglepop had the wrong idea.

Stores are the most vulnerable area on eBay at this time but it's going to take a big guy to wrestle that business away from them.

Sellers are setting up their own websites.  They don't need a "big guy's" help.

EDIT: Volusion is Sneaky's "big guy"

[bargainbloodhound]

EDIT: Volusion is Sneaky's "big guy"

If eBay had half a brain they would have bought Volusion or MonsterCommerce instead of wasting their money buying the overrated Kurant StoreSense (ProStores).

If they realy want to make ProStores competitive they should also dump the FVF fee.  Why pay ProStores or Yahoo Stores an FVF fee on top of their already inflated monthly fees when there are other solutions with more features, no FVF, and lower monthly fees?

It is my firm belief that eBay has and will maintain control of the Worldwide Online Auction business

I think that should be changed to the US/UK/Germany/Canada (and toss in a few other countries) online auction business because eBay has failed miserably in many other regions:

Asia: every single market where eBay has gone head to head with Yahoo owned/controlled sites it has gotten its ass kicked: Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and now Korea where GMarket (10% owned by Yahoo) has taken over the #1 spot.

New Zealand: TradeMe with a 95% market share killed eBay
Sweden: eBay lost badly to Tradera (and later bought Tradera)
Poland:  QXL's Allegro has a 92% market share
Switzerland: QXL's Ricardo has a 75% market share

QXL owned sites are also the leading auction sites in Norway, Denmark, Czech Republic, Hungary,  and they are emerging as the leader in Eastern Europe with sites in the Ukraine and Russia.

Jack Ma's Alibaba (Taobao) is also planning to open up new consumer auction sites in other Asian countries (including rumors of India...eBay's last remaining stronghold in Asia) and my bet is they will be very competitive with eBay's sites.

eBay's biggest problem is that it tries to impose its US corporate culture on the markets it operates in...Yahoo and QXL don't do that when they move into a country.

[FiberGuy]

[quote author=sneakymagenta link=topic=5499.msg49593#msg49593 date=1176664347]
Sellers are setting up their own websites.  They don't need a "big guy's" help.

EDIT: Volusion is Sneaky's "big guy"
[/quote]

And their pricing ain't that bad for a full-featured hosted cart, either.  In fact, their premium service costs about 1/3 what we were paying ebay at one time.  :o

[mandy]

Asia: every single market where eBay has gone head to head with Yahoo owned/controlled sites it has gotten its ass kicked: Japan, China

The final 2006 numbers in China: Taobao 82% share, eBay 15.4%:

eBay, which merged its consumer operations into a joint venture with Tom Group's Tom Online in December, had only a 15.4% share in the China's C2C market in 2006...

Local rival Taobao, a subsidiary of Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba, partly owned by Yahoo!, rose from 67.3% to 82% in the period.

full article: http://www.chinaknowledge.com/news/news-...px?id=6670