topic Re: Ebay Is Buying Depop From Etsy in Seller Central

Ebay Is Buying Depop From Etsy

rainbowtrax — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 01:30:15 GMT

Etsy have just announced that ebay are buying Depop from them: eBay to Acquire Depop from Etsy :: Etsy, Inc. (ETSY)

Re: Ebay Is Buying Depop From Etsy

jonatjonatjonat — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 03:58:50 GMT

Plus points of depop - they call buyer protection fee a Marketplace Fee (how much it is though is wildly vague at up to 5% and up to £1 fixed fee per sale)

Minus points of depop - they state there are no selling fees on depop. There are however 2.9% + 30p payment processing fees. At least with eBay free to sell means I won’t pay any fees myself!

Re: Ebay Is Buying Depop From Etsy

*vyolla* — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 07:54:29 GMT

Even bigger minus point - nobody really uses Depop now, they all moved to the other site.

Re: Ebay Is Buying Depop From Etsy

tommystrezures — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 08:25:51 GMT

Here is more info on eBays figure to end of year it also mentions the Depop purchase (about a third of the way down)

https://investors.ebayinc.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2026/eBay-Inc--Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2025-Results/default.aspx

Re: Ebay Is Buying Depop From Etsy

c_of_e84 — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 10:08:05 GMT

Straws, cluctching at springs to mind, probably offload it later like they did bumtree.

Re: Ebay Is Buying Depop From Etsy

rainbowtrax — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 12:32:59 GMT

@*vyolla* wrote:

Even bigger minus point - nobody really uses Depop now, they all moved to the other site.

Yeah, I would have said Depop is pretty much dead in the water these days as it's been massively overtaken by Vinted. I think it'll be hard to regain any market share now.

Re: Ebay Is Buying Depop From Etsy

c_of_e84 — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 12:47:28 GMT

Great way to increase what is known as "active buyers" to a companies portfolio.

Re: Ebay Is Buying Depop From Etsy

valueaddedresource — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 12:56:16 GMT

@c_of_e84 wrote:
Great way to increase what is known as "active buyers" to a companies portfolio.

@c_of_e84 bingo! If you look at the earnings details, in Q4 they reported 135M Active Buyers total, but 1M of that was from their acquisition of Norwegian marketplace Tise, which closed in October.

Without that, they would have still been stuck at 134M, indicating eBay is perhaps giving up on trying to grow Active Buyers on their legacy marketplace, turning to purchasing new buyers through M&A instead.

Re: Ebay Is Buying Depop From Etsy

the_book_seekers — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 22:58:44 GMT

UK sales might not be the reason for the purchase. Depop has offices in New York and US sales increased by 60% last year. It's also its appeal to the younger generation.

Re: Ebay Is Buying Depop From Etsy

c_of_e84 — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 10:05:55 GMT

Seen many companies online and offline do this, the only real assets are the data, the market valuations of tech corporations is overinflated madness but they have to keep the shareholders happy, it didnt realise ebay was so small compared with other marketplaces, its now just somewhere to come if you want something cheap, years ago you could build relationships with buyers but now its just a machine.

Re: Ebay Is Buying Depop From Etsy

insidethe93 — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 10:50:03 GMT

valueaddedresource wrote: "...eBay is perhaps giving up on trying to grow Active Buyers on their legacy marketplace, turning to purchasing new buyers through M&A instead."

If eBay is giving up on growing Active Buyers, it's perhaps because M&A (mergers & acquisition) is £expensive but a quick fix as it's "only" handing over money then telling the acquired users "here are eBay's rules". It's easier than putting in the time & effort required to repair long-term site glitches or properly managing the site or even improving it.

Likewise, rather than spend weeks systematically tidying, decluttering and organising my home, I ignore the core issues and their details. It's quicker, easier and feels like rapid progress just to buy more storage.

To name but six eBay areas in need of overhaul / vast improvement: customer service, estimated delivery dates, search engine, dealing with certain couriers re routinely appalling service, feedback system, Simple Delivery.

Just those six areas are big problems and are interconnected. eBay could deal with them all if it was willing to do so, willing to invest the time and effort.

Re couriers, eBay now has contracts that tie it, e.g. with Evri?, but they could re-negotiate or not renew contracts.

A company's reputation and public relatons are important too. eBay, you can acquire new buyers through M&A but that's merely an expensive inadequate sticking plaster on a life-threatening wound. Without repairing eBay's core issues and with the impression of being tyrannical (which, as I see it, started big-time with BPf and SD), customers will continue to haemorrhage from the site, including many of those newly acquired buyers once they start using eBay.

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Re: Ebay Is Buying Depop From Etsy

ett1954 — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 13:59:48 GMT

" ...... in Q4 they reported 135M Active Buyers total, but 1M of that was from their acquisition of Norwegian marketplace Tise, which closed in October." - @valueaddedresource Will that 1M active buyers not therefore drop off the Active Buyer figure in this year's 4th Quarter or next year's 1st Quarter figures? If so this means eBay would have to sustain an ongoing M&A programme just to keep the Active Buyer figure constant if it is not actively growing within eBay.

Surely investors would eventually see through such a ploy.; especially if the unsustainable ad revenue increases start to show a fall, or even stagnation.

Re: Ebay Is Buying Depop From Etsy

valueaddedresource — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 15:42:41 GMT

@ett1954 wrote:
" ...... in Q4 they reported 135M Active Buyers total, but 1M of that was from their acquisition of Norwegian marketplace Tise, which closed in October." - @valueaddedresource Will that 1M active buyers not therefore drop off the Active Buyer figure in this year's 4th Quarter or next year's 1st Quarter figures? If so this means eBay would have to sustain an ongoing M&A programme just to keep the Active Buyer figure constant if it is not actively growing within eBay.

Surely investors would eventually see through such a ploy.; especially if the unsustainable ad revenue increases start to show a fall, or even stagnation.

@ett1954 the full 1M won't drop off...they'll just be incorporated into the aggregate number and not split out separately in the future.

In this report, they're stated separately just because the acquisition closed during the quarter being reported.

In subsequent reports, they'll just be folded into the total Active Buyer stat, which will continue to be measured/defined as "all buyers who paid for a transaction on our [eBay's] Marketplace platforms within the previous 12 month period."

Since it's a rolling 12 month period, any Tise buyers who don't make a purchase within the next 12 months would drop off the report of the same quarter next year (just like any eBay buyers would) but Tise may gain new buyers within that timeframe to offset that churn or maybe even increase the total.

The same scenario (initially broken out after acquisition, then folded into total) has played out with other eBay acquisitions like TCGPlayer and also goes the opposite direction when they sell off or close a subsidiary - for example when they closed their Turkish marketplace, GittiGidiyor, in 2022, they broke out those active buyers separately in the report so investors could see how much of the loss was due to that marketplace going away vs the rest of their business.

I expect they'll do the same once Depop is officially onboard, which it sounds like will initially add around 7M buyers.

And just to put things in a much wider timescale context - that will likely finally put eBay back above Q1 2018 levels of Active Buyers, something they have been unable to achieve on their own for 15 consecutive quarters.

Note: eBay changed the definition of GMV and Active Buyers at the end of 2021 and restated both figures going back to 2018 (chart reflects restated figures per eBay's amended reports.)

Re: Ebay Is Buying Depop From Etsy

ett1954 — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 17:37:42 GMT

Thanks for that explanation. It is certainly interesting to see how figures can be manipulated by omission.

"... when they closed their Turkish marketplace, GittiGidiyor, in 2022, they broke out those active buyers separately in the report so investors could see how much of the loss was due to that marketplace going away vs the rest of their business." - so when figures can appear to be bad a full explanation and breakdown is given for a negative, whereas when figures improve it is left to the reader / investor to identify the reason for the improvement and not just assume it is due to improved performance. It is certainly a lesson in not taking anything at face value from these quarterly statements.

It will be interesting to see how eBay celebrate the massive increase of buyers when Depop's buyers are officially added. I guess eBay will be also rubbing their hands at the opportunity to improve advertising / promotional revenue that can be exploited from Depop's sellers.

Re: Ebay Is Buying Depop From Etsy

insidethe93 — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 10:50:14 GMT

ett1954 wrote: "It will be interesting to see how eBay celebrate the massive increase of buyers when Depop's buyers are officially added."

With a new fee?

eBay's announcement will probably include: "excited", "our family", "synergy" and, worse as it co-opts me, "together".

It'll be USA spelling, not British spelling, as with the eBay advert for Seller Clinics e.g. "one-on-one" instead of the British "one-to-one".

Re: Ebay Is Buying Depop From Etsy

c_of_e84 — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 13:38:50 GMT

As I have said before, fixing things is not possible, theres so much based on legacy thats been patched and tickled with no one can undo the knitting so that leads to another layer of patches, to put it another way, if server processor power had not got faster at the rate it did get faster nothing would work, add to that data centres all over the world working at different speeds and running backups at different times with different versions and we have what we have today, something that just about rubs along, a clay thimble on a potters wheel that truned into a ginger jar on the same size wheel with even more potters adding more clay to it and we all know what will happen in the end. Its well past the time when you could say STOP because there is anew ground up version here now and we will migrate to that.