It’s back to strictly bags and accessories for eBags.com.
In August eBags sold its footwear and accessories site, 6pm.com, to Zappos.com Inc. for an undisclosed amount. Since then eBags, which has been selling online for a decade, has concentrated on better ways to market and merchandise its core inventory of 500 brands of bags and related accessories representing 33,000 SKUs.
For instance, in 2007 eBags, No. 92 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, launched a new section on the home page – Emerging Designers – that showcases up and coming shoes and accessories designers. Since the program went live, more than 60 designers now display their full line of products on eBags.com. A Google maps feature enables customers to shop by regions of the country or by each designer’s name and price range.
Other aspects of the Emerging Designers program include videos showcasing each designer’s personality and merchandise, customer reviews and advanced rich media images of the available SKUs. The new program lets eBags, which grew web sales in 2007 by more than 20%, leverage the web to spot new design talent and carry a broader array of new merchandise. “Unlike a department store buyer who may only cherry pick one or two of the designer’s products, we give them the chance to display their entire line,” says eBags co-founder and senior vice president Peter Cobb.
Going forward eBags will continue to concentrate on its core market. “We took a bit of a two-year diversion with 6pm.com and we were probably ahead of our time with some of the technology we offered on the site,” Cobb says. “Ultimately we decided that we wanted to be number one or two in a $40 billion market we know as opposed to third or fourth in shoes where other online retailers were already established.”
In 2008, eBags also plans to grow its overseas book of business by expanding its third-party e-commerce service further into the United Kingdom and Germany. “We are planning to have a lot on our plate this year,” Cobb says.
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