Tired of eBay

[glospicks]

I'm honestly fed up with eBay, so I decided that I will build a proper marketplace, where every seller stands their chance of being visible to the buyers and actually selling something.

Question is: Will you follow?

[roger_roger_over_and_nowt]

I think if that were possible it would already exist.

[edwardian-dreams]

Id try it if it looked good

theres so many people with money and tech backgrounds so why aren’t these people already trying something 

maybe because there’s enough alternatives already out there 

[mrood786]

closest thing is gum tree and facebook market place, these are full of scams

Amazon market place the only other option that are getting mass sellers from the bay

[edwardian-dreams]

These are for collection only though?

[wildavdavi]

I'm all for it but it's incredibly hard to build, people say they are going to build a new platform all the time but never have what it takes to get it off the ground. First you need to build a robust framework that can't be manipulated or hacked, next you'll need to build up a massive legal department to deal with XYZ- as bad as eBay can be when you're on the receiving end of a negative event, I don't think there's any easy solution unless you have generous insurance or deep pockets.

Don't take my words as discouragement though, they are intended to make you think logically about the task and be realistic about it so you can take the right approach. I've built plenty of websites for commerce in the past (never an auction style site) and they all have their fair share of issues, just make sure to research everything in advance.

[roastedcatnuts]

Maybe look at how Ebid started and build a platform that uses advertising to help sales...

[vinylscot]

I suppose it depends how ambitious and/or impatient you are.

If you want to even put a dent into eBay quickly (say, within three years), you're probably talking at least £100 million. Proper due diligence, legal preparations and framework engineering will probably take up the first two years, and then there would be the long slog of getting noticed, attracting customers and establishing yourself.

Vinted took around 15 years to make a serious impact, and, while their original set-up costs aren't publicly available, they did raise over £100 million in 2019, and reported no profits until 2023.

...and the chance of success assumes you are good at this, which (no offence intended), you probably aren't.

[magpiecorner1]

Vinted have raised nearly $900 million in funding since the beginning.

Apparently valued at $5 billion theses days.

Doable if you can interest a billionaire, there are nearly 3000 of them, and it's a drop in the ocean for majority investors.   Best bet would be a government subsidy - tackle job creation and nett zero in one fell swoop.

To put it into context - the Scottish Ferry debacle means a couple of ferries have cost £350 million, and the Scottish Government has put in place £3.7 billion in subsidies over the next ten years.

So, definitely doable.  Just don't let John Swinney get involved.

[moonlight-rhapsody]

I admire your entrepreneurial spirit, and even Apple and other mega companies started from nothing, but the scale would seem insurmountable, at least to me.  Perhaps try pitching it to Dragons Den.

[wyntersemporium]

I was looking at doing a alternative to IG / fb as sick of being told you can’t say that or do that all biased to a no country in the Middle East.

but not good at coding at all

[the-nutwood-collection]

The problem is not only the immense cost of the technical and support infrastructure required for such a venture, it's the simple fact that without buyers, you can't attract sellers and, without sellers, you can't attract buyers.

This is why early entrants to the market, like eBay and Match.com, are immensely profitable.  They provided a service that didn't exist and grabbed the market.

Over time, eBay has had competitors that have nibbled their market - for example Etsy - but these competitors have tended to target niche markets.  To my knowledge, there is nobody that provides a 'sell anything to anyone' business model. 

My view is that anyone who wants to change eBay to a  different business model would have to take over eBay.  Who would have the money to do this?  Amazon maybe.  However, I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon had considered this, and decided that it just wasn't worth doing.