EBay Inc. is reinventing itself from online flea market to outlet mall. And Stephanie Tilenius, senior vice president and general manager of eBay North America, invited major merchants to take advantage of eBay's new focus on making itself the leading e-commerce site for selling excess and out-of-season inventory.
"EBay is moving upmarket," Stephanie Tilenius, senior vice president and general manager of eBay North America, said in a featured address at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition 2009, which hosted more than 5,000 attendees in Boston. "We're becoming a distribution channel of choice for large retailers. There's a huge opportunity for you to build your business and make money on eBay."
Telenius was one of 178 speakers at IRCE 2009, which was held at the Boston Convention Center. The event featured 91 conference sessions related to all aspects of Internet-based retailing for retail chains, web-only retailers and catalogers. It also featured an exhibit hall with 368 technology and services exhibitors. In an exhibit hall raffle, a 2010 Lexus RX Hybrid was won by Simone Drapeau of children's footwear retailer The Stride Rite Corp.
In the presentation by Tilenius on eBay's strategy of working with major retailers, she pointed to online retailer Zapppos.com, No. 27 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, which last week launched an eBay store to liquidate overstock goods, and clothing manufacturer BCBG, which is now selling on eBay through an unnamed large eBay merchant.
Tilenius says eBay has made several changes to better serve larger retailers, with more to come in September. Among the changes implemented last fall is a program called Large Merchant Services, developed with technology company Mercent, which makes it easier for retailers to sell on eBay many pieces of a particular item in many sizes and colors.
EBay is testing offering coupons on the site and a program that offers 2% cashback to registered buyers. The marketplace launched a Daily Deal feature in the fourth quarter and will introduce next week limited-time "flash sales." A new feature enables eBay to answer consumer questions based on information in a seller's listing, saving the seller the work of responding. A program being tested with top buyers provides them rapid dispute resolution, and Tilenius says that will be rolled out more broadly in eBay's next feature release, scheduled for September.
She says the platform upgrade to be implemented in September will be "a reasonably large release," that eBay, as is its practice, will explain in detail 60 days in advance, some time in July.
She says the September release will include improvements in the three key areas of eBay's value proposition: selection, value and trust. Among the changes will be more ways to differentiate eBay sellers that garner top satisfaction scores from eBay buyers. Those merchants might be badged as top sellers in search results, says Tilenius, who promised further details next month.
Despite the efforts to appeal to larger retailers, Tilenius says eBay is not abandoning many smaller merchants that sell on eBay. She notes many of the changes that improve customer experience and service benefit all retailers, and adds that sellers with unique merchandise will continue to rank high in eBay search results. Speaking of eBay search rankings, she says, "It's about quality of service, but it's also about quality of inventory."
More innovation is coming, Tilenius promises. "We're a company in transformation," she says. "You'll see more change from us and we think it's more change for the better. We are literally building a better eBay every day."
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