Revolving Door Dept: Overstock Auctions' Stormy is Gone, Bye Bye, Outta Here!!!!

[mandy]

Overstock Auctions has another new head of auctions. I believe this is the 50th  :twistedevil: in the past 2 years.  Stormy Simon is gone after 3 months, replaced by Meghan Tuohig

osted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 10:06 pm    Post subject: I'd like to introduce myself... 
Greetings Folks,

My name is Meghan Tuohig and I work for Overstock.com Auctions.

A goal of mine for the New Year is to establish a closer relationship to the customers of Overstock.com Auctions. After spending time observing the message board activity from afar, I would like to partake in the conversation and hope that you welcome me into this lively community. I look forward to actively participating in board discussions on a regular basis – not only to declare site modifications, request feedback, and clarify possible confusion, but to also become better acquainted with you.

I’m excited to announce the functionality that will be released to the site on Monday, January 22nd. Keep your eyes peeled for the following changes early next week:

• Non-paying bidder timelines modified – Sellers will be able to report a non-paying bidder after 7 days, though not after 30, of an auction’s close. In addition, the reported buyer will have 7 days (not 14) to provide proof of payment.
• View counter revived – We heard that sellers missed this feature, so we’re bringing it back.
• Ask user a question links removed from user homepages – To minimize phishing emails, protect customers from fraud, and to discourage off-site transactions, users will only be able to contact a seller from the item detail page. Users will still have the ability to invite friends into their personal network and will be encouraged to communicate through comments to friends and through the message boards.

I look forward to these enhancements and hope you do as well.

Enjoy the weekend!

Sincerely,
Meghan

By the way, I’ll soon have a forum within the O-Management Corner and could use your help in naming it. Any suggestions?

Meghan is too modest to mention it, but she is the boss of Overstock Auctions. Stormy wrestled through some necessary changes before moving on to another project ( know some may disagree, I know, but this is already a far healthier ecosystem than it was a few months ago). Meghan is running the place now.

thread on O boards: http://forums.auctions.overstock.com/vie...hp?t=16478

EDIT: 23,333 listings, down 93% since early December

[sneakymagenta]

23,333 listings, down 93% since early December

INSIDE INFO: STORMY WAS A SLEAZEBAY PAINPAL LIEWORLD OPERATIVE WHO WAS SENT TO OVERSTOCK TO DESTROY THEIR AUCTIONS AND SNEAKY!!! 

[BellisimaJ.]

INSIDE INFO: STORMY WAS A SLEAZEBAY PAINPAL LIEWORLD OPERATIVE WHO WAS SENT TO OVERSTOCK TO DESTROY THEIR AUCTIONS AND SNEAKY!!!

Gee, she and I have something in common.

[bargainbloodhound]

[quote author=sneakymagenta link=topic=6768.msg40938#msg40938 date=1169495547]

23,333 listings, down 93% since early December

INSIDE INFO: STORMY WAS A SLEAZEBAY PAINPAL LIEWORLD OPERATIVE WHO WAS SENT TO OVERSTOCK TO DESTROY THEIR AUCTIONS AND SNEAKY!!! 
[/quote]

Non-paying bidder timelines modified – Sellers will be able to report a non-paying bidder after 7 days, though not after 30, of an auction’s close. In addition, the reported buyer will have 7 days (not 14) to provide proof of payment.

I'm shocked.  A change that actually helps sellers

[mandy]

Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 10:34 pm    Post subject: Stormy, Meghan, and Auctions 
Hi folks.

I got a bunch of calls in the last couple days about Stormy, why she rolled off auctions, did she leave the company, and who Meghan is.

Stormy is a brilliant street-fighter whom I move around the company to dive into our biggest problems and opportunities, usually with a few analysts in tow. When we decided to do mass advertising she wrote our radio and TV ads, produced those commercials with Sabine, and buys our airtime. She also took over customer service and brought it to #4 in the country in about a year.

Stormy came into auctions in late September, and within a few weeks had pretty much diagnosed the problems (disparate treatment for small sellers, and the subscription plans that made listings so cheap that we got far too many listings starting at artifically high prices, which smothered everyone's sell-through-rates and destroyed all of our economics). She suggested the plan of going back to a listing fees for everyone, and the other changes we made to level the playing field among sellers. She also realized cut our costs in auctions dramatically, so that the tab became an economically viable proposition for us.

As you must have noticed, things have turned around dramatically in the last few weeks. Listings have dropped almost as far as we wanted them to; we see that the sell through rates are many, many times higher than they have ever been on our site; page views/auction have soared, etc. Once it was clear that these changes had pushed things in the right direction, I moved Stormy on to other duties (developing a new source of revenue for us, while maintaining our customer service and branding departments). We handed the reins to Meghan.

Meghan is a terrific young woman whom you will be getting to know better (I have asked her to create a forum like mine: you will see her picture up tomorrow, I hope, and will probably never check in mine again). She shares my and Stormy's belief that some basics had been forgotten on this auction tab, and that simplification is good. She has a small, tight team now that has things under control. Our customer service and content review is managed by Jason, a wonderful fellow we hired some time ago with solid experience at eBay, and of course, Joe P handles our relations with the largest sellers.

Incidentally, Meghan now reports directly to me, and I am really enjoying watching these changes take hold. i know that I made a few abrupt moves on the controls some weeks ago, because we wanted to start off the new year right. I am sorry about that, but we are very glad we did, because every auctions metric that we care about has turned around sharply. Stormy can be proud of the decisions she made, as Meghan can over the auction tab she now commands.

So please, never doubt that you are in good hands with Meghan. We have returned to first principles, adn they seem to be working.

Here is a question: it is our hope that by getting conversation rates up as they are now, sellers will gradually realize that they can list more items (I think the average seller now lists more than a dozen at a time). I expect they will experiement, increasing the numbers bit by bit, to see what our traffic supports. I also expect, or at least hope, that as word starts getting out into the eBay community, a few more sellers may come try things. And lastly, I get the impression that some eBay groups are sticky, that is, that some sellers will bring dedicated buyers when they come.

How realistic does this sound?

Respectfully,

Patrick

http://forums.auctions.overstock.com/vie...hp?t=16497

[sneakymagenta]

How realistic does this sound?

:

[thentavius]

That's what they call a "professional eulogy"

LOL.