Mega-Seller May Vanish From EBAY, Ease Crowded Search Results
storm888
Posts: 11,701 ✭✭✭
Small collectible sellers could benefit, if EBAY is forced to again
cater to the "little guys."
There is virtually no cross-category traffic from the megas to the
little guys. There is huge crossover traffic from the legacy buyers
in consumer categories to the small collectible sellers.
With its largest lister now in the hands of a MAJOR competitor,
EBAY could start to question its mega-seller addiction.
Obviously, for some reason, EBAY passed on the purchase.
.............
The New York Times
May 21, 2010, 12:09 am
Buy.com Makes Its Biggest Sale Yet: Itself
By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER
Rakuten, a Japanese company that runs the biggest e-commerce site in Japan, said on Thursday that it had agreed to buy Buy.com, the online shopping site, for $250 million.
The sale marks the next chapter for Buy.com, a company whose life mirrors the ups and downs of the dot-com era. Rakuten hopes that the acquisition will make its marketplace, Rakuten Ichiba, more competitive internationally with e-commerce giants like Amazon.com and eBay.
“Rakuten Ichiba is very very competitive against a very powerful company like Google or Amazon or eBay, but that was a pretty domestic business,” said Hiroshi Mikitani, founder and chief executive of Rakuten and the sixth-richest person in Japan, according to Forbes.
Both companies were started in 1997, the year that Amazon.com went public. Buy.com, which is based in Aliso Viejo, Calif., went public in 2000 and its stock price soared and then crashed. Its founder, Scott Blum, took it private a year later.
Since then, it has grown to 14 million customers. It directly sells half its products and the other half are sold by other e-commerce businesses that use its online store.
Buy.com is also the largest seller on eBay, which has frustrated some of eBay’s smaller sellers. It is unclear how that relationship will change after the acquisition is finalized.
“We’ve had a strong partnership with eBay and we believe we’ll continue to have a strong partnership with eBay,” said Neel Grover, chief executive of Buy.com.
Rakuten has 64 million customers and reported $3.2 billion in sales last year. For the most part, except for books and DVDs and some individual sellers in Japan, the marketplace hosts virtual storefronts for other companies to sell their goods.
In the last five years, it has made acquisitions and struck partnerships with e-commerce companies in Taiwan, Thailand, China and the United States, where it bought LinkShare, an affiliate marketing company.
Mr. Mikitani said Rakuten’s marketplace model offers sellers a better experience than Amazon and eBay. Sellers can choose the design of their shops, do their own marketing campaigns and communicate directly with their customers.
Rakuten also adds a gaming element to shopping through its points program, which rewards shoppers for things like making purchases or if the local baseball team wins a game.
Some of those elements might arrive on Buy.com, Mr. Mikitani said. “If we can get together, we will be able to create a very competitive business model,” he said.
Together, they will sell 60 million products from 35,000 merchants, according to Rakuten.
30
cater to the "little guys."
There is virtually no cross-category traffic from the megas to the
little guys. There is huge crossover traffic from the legacy buyers
in consumer categories to the small collectible sellers.
With its largest lister now in the hands of a MAJOR competitor,
EBAY could start to question its mega-seller addiction.
Obviously, for some reason, EBAY passed on the purchase.
.............
The New York Times
May 21, 2010, 12:09 am
Buy.com Makes Its Biggest Sale Yet: Itself
By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER
Rakuten, a Japanese company that runs the biggest e-commerce site in Japan, said on Thursday that it had agreed to buy Buy.com, the online shopping site, for $250 million.
The sale marks the next chapter for Buy.com, a company whose life mirrors the ups and downs of the dot-com era. Rakuten hopes that the acquisition will make its marketplace, Rakuten Ichiba, more competitive internationally with e-commerce giants like Amazon.com and eBay.
“Rakuten Ichiba is very very competitive against a very powerful company like Google or Amazon or eBay, but that was a pretty domestic business,” said Hiroshi Mikitani, founder and chief executive of Rakuten and the sixth-richest person in Japan, according to Forbes.
Both companies were started in 1997, the year that Amazon.com went public. Buy.com, which is based in Aliso Viejo, Calif., went public in 2000 and its stock price soared and then crashed. Its founder, Scott Blum, took it private a year later.
Since then, it has grown to 14 million customers. It directly sells half its products and the other half are sold by other e-commerce businesses that use its online store.
Buy.com is also the largest seller on eBay, which has frustrated some of eBay’s smaller sellers. It is unclear how that relationship will change after the acquisition is finalized.
“We’ve had a strong partnership with eBay and we believe we’ll continue to have a strong partnership with eBay,” said Neel Grover, chief executive of Buy.com.
Rakuten has 64 million customers and reported $3.2 billion in sales last year. For the most part, except for books and DVDs and some individual sellers in Japan, the marketplace hosts virtual storefronts for other companies to sell their goods.
In the last five years, it has made acquisitions and struck partnerships with e-commerce companies in Taiwan, Thailand, China and the United States, where it bought LinkShare, an affiliate marketing company.
Mr. Mikitani said Rakuten’s marketplace model offers sellers a better experience than Amazon and eBay. Sellers can choose the design of their shops, do their own marketing campaigns and communicate directly with their customers.
Rakuten also adds a gaming element to shopping through its points program, which rewards shoppers for things like making purchases or if the local baseball team wins a game.
Some of those elements might arrive on Buy.com, Mr. Mikitani said. “If we can get together, we will be able to create a very competitive business model,” he said.
Together, they will sell 60 million products from 35,000 merchants, according to Rakuten.
30
Folks Who Bite Get Bitten. Folks Who Don't Bite Get Eaten.
0
Comments
Some random eBay thoughts....
I still think the daily deal thing works for them....I buy stuff from it all the time and others appear to as well.
I wonder how well the fashion thing is going...any guage Storm?
Perhaps the future of the like experiments will be limited to marketing like the fashion and daily deal things, in the sense how they are part of eBay....I guess compared to halfprice which is seperate or the current model which floods the main floor.
In a side note, I have done quite a bit better since the change over. Might take a break here for a little while though. Feels like the calm before the storm and I have several other projects that need taken care of sometime.
Clear Skies,
Mark
Raw: Tony Gonzalez (low #'d cards, and especially 1/1's) and Steve Young.
<< <i>Here by reading the title I thought 4 Sharp Corners was leaving. Dang way to get my hopes up!! >>
//////////////////
There are megas that are good for traffic and there are
megas that are bad for traffic.
4SC is a net-draw for traffic - by a big margin - to smaller
sellers. Their feed of newbies to lower-tier sellers is likely
pretty much unmatched in almost ANY category.
..........................................
Some of the newest fashion-initiatives are working well; there
are others planned.
Small fashion-sellers are getting their fair share of the eyeballs.
But, the largest sellers dominate.
The traffic feed from megas to small sellers - in the same cats -
is fair to good.
Cross-category traffic from fashion-megas is TINY. That means
that while many more eyeballs may be on the site, they are not
looking at collectibles; they ARE looking at smaller-sellers' fashion
items, tho.
Cross-category traffic is HUGE from legacy-buyers that still only
like to frequent the small fashion sellers. These shoppers are looking
in collectible cats at very high rates; obviously, a benefit to small
sellers offering collectibles.
.............
I'm glad they're here.
-CDs Nuts, 1/20/14
*1956 Topps baseball- 97.4% complete, 7.24 GPA
*Clemente basic set: 85.0% complete, 7.89 GPA
<< <i>4SC seems to take kind of a bad rap on this board. I can only speak for myself, but I have bought from them 12-15X and have had nothing but good experiences.
I'm glad they're here. >>
Amen.
<< <i>4SC seems to take kind of a bad rap on this board. I can only speak for myself, but I have bought from them 12-15X and have had nothing but good experiences.
I'm glad they're here. >>
+1
4SC and their 10,000 (?) subs per month has accelerated both the bloating of the pop reports and the lowering of card values on all years (and all sports) from late 60s to early 80s.
Pops are bound to increase over time, and low-pop commons eventually lose their low-pop status (and value), but this company's presence on Ebay has sped up that process by years.
Looking at sales on VCP, it's not uncommon for 4SC to have the last 5 sales of a particular card, 7 of the last 10 or something like that.
They are great for buyers who want graded cards cheap, but horrible for ebayers who sell similar stuff, like myself of course. So yes, my opinion is probably just sour grapes.
However, I think our market is healthiest when prices are strong, so any company whose business serves to drive down prices AND scarcity is bad for the industry.
It's not like they are simply selling a large quantity of items whose scarcity is already established and cannot be changed. For instance, if they had the largest supply of antique bicycles, they cannot create more antique bicycles, so their activity isn't increasing the quantity available, and prices should remain stable no matter who sells them. But their massive card submissions generate a greater quantity of a collectible - the graded card, which is very different from the ungraded card and a very different commodity IMO. Creating a higher quantity where before it didn't exist, and doing it so quickly, is not good for any of us.
They were never supposed to be sustainable just make a bunch quickly and get out.
Unfortunately I agree with everything you stated. My question is this...who are they (4SC)? Are they huge on the show circuit? It seems they have a ton of 70's stuff and late 60's. Are they affiliated with Fritsch or something? They seem to have an endless and I mean endless supply of cards.
This is not to offend anyone and I do it sometimes; but grading companies were not really put in place for PSA 8 1968 commons. Graders were needed to stop big dealers from ripping off the little man with their overgraded crap---especially mail order. I submit some commons; but I do limit it to what I feel has a chance at being mint.
I've heard they are also a pretty big buyer of Fritsch's stuff
I called them once a few years back and their staffer told me they have many different sources for raw cards
<< <i>Agree with Gumby's post, especially since I was a buyer of a few of their '75 mini "specials" a couple years back.
4SC and their 10,000 (?) subs per month has accelerated both the bloating of the pop reports and the lowering of card values on all years (and all sports) from late 60s to early 80s.
Pops are bound to increase over time, and low-pop commons eventually lose their low-pop status (and value), but this company's presence on Ebay has sped up that process by years.
Looking at sales on VCP, it's not uncommon for 4SC to have the last 5 sales of a particular card, 7 of the last 10 or something like that.
They are great for buyers who want graded cards cheap, but horrible for ebayers who sell similar stuff, like myself of course. So yes, my opinion is probably just sour grapes.
However, I think our market is healthiest when prices are strong, so any company whose business serves to drive down prices AND scarcity is bad for the industry.
It's not like they are simply selling a large quantity of items whose scarcity is already established and cannot be changed. For instance, if they had the largest supply of antique bicycles, they cannot create more antique bicycles, so their activity isn't increasing the quantity available, and prices should remain stable no matter who sells them. But their massive card submissions generate a greater quantity of a collectible - the graded card, which is very different from the ungraded card and a very different commodity IMO. Creating a higher quantity where before it didn't exist, and doing it so quickly, is not good for any of us. >>
I made this exact same observation awhile back and had many, including three longstanding members here, come down very very hard on me, ridiculed me personally, along with my collection.
Just sayin'
They will burn through their supplies and then the card market will stabilize. Small time sellers resent them and I can see why. It is capitalism or survival of the fittest writ large.
For the consumer, this is a good thing. A lot of choices available. However, it often happens that a collector buys a card and a month later that same card sells for even less. That is the nature of increasing the supply so quickly.
I thought a big criticism of 4SC was that they may receive preferential treatment in grading. I don't know about that. Their business model is simple: buy raw in bulk, get them graded and sell on ebay. They deal in bulk and fast turnover, so they may lose money on some cards, but overall the large volume helps amplify that small average profit margin per card.
BST: Tennessebanker, Downtown1974, LarkinCollector, nendee
<< <i>I like the observation that 4SC is not sustainable. They may not care about it either.
They will burn through their supplies and then the card market will stabilize. Small time sellers resent them and I can see why. It is capitalism or survival of the fittest writ large.
For the consumer, this is a good thing. A lot of choices available. However, it often happens that a collector buys a card and a month later that same card sells for even less. That is the nature of increasing the supply so quickly.
I thought a big criticism of 4SC was that they may receive preferential treatment in grading. I don't know about that. Their business model is simple: buy raw in bulk, get them graded and sell on ebay. They deal in bulk and fast turnover, so they may lose money on some cards, but overall the large volume helps amplify that small average profit margin per card. >>
This is the reason I stopped a lot of my registry collections... it seemed like the card I just bought 1 week was much cheaper a month later. While I enjoyed the registry the fun of the hunt somehow went away when prices continued to go down.