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09-02-2015 9:39 AM
Don't think I can add much that hasn't already been said better by the last three posters, but I just wanted to laugh at this bit again:
In the rare turnaround for an Internet company, eBay came back–reaching as high as $59.70 a year ago–because of two key factors. The first was PayPal, which eBay bought for $1.5 billion in 2002. The second was CEO John Donahoe, who realigned the company at great effort to not only keep PayPal ascendant but also to revive eBay’s original marketplace.
Right about Paypal, woefully wrong about Donahoe, IMHO.
Ebay could have (and should have) kept it's position as THE online market venue for small traders IF they had kept their wits about them and not wanted so desperately to be something they're not. This article assumes that people are all impulsive and 'trend driven', rather than carefully seeking out bargains. Some people are fashion victims who follow the latest trends for sure, but the vast majority are not, and those who are often grow out of it. Some products certainly do largely sell to a fashionable market (the young and the impressionable), but who were Ebay's main users in the past?
Clue, the guy in that advert wasn't cast at random, most of Ebay's buyers were middle aged, or retired, staid, sensible, careful with their money, but, also modestly affluent. To be honest most long term sellers here also come in to this category - I include myself.
THAT customer base wouldn't have moved if it didn't have to, it's not the kind of customer base to move! It's only moved BECAUSE Ebay was neglected and abused badly. What attracts, and keeps, that kind of customer base is STABILITY and RELIABILITY, look at that other selling venue to see what I mean, they share a percentage of the same customer base. In fact, Ebay SHOULD have been able to grow during the recession years - it had everything it needed for that, the right kind of goods, a massive bank of the right kind of sellers, and the right kind of buyers/reputation. As proof of this (and I'm not saying they're identical, but there are a lot of similarities) that other site not only grew, it thrived during that period - no sign of THAT site 'going stale', is there?
Ebay is a classic example of 'The Grass is Greener', chasing a ridiculous dream, it's pretty much destroyed itself, when what it had was a perfectly sound base to build on successfully. Why has it done it? I think because of it's CEO, who is probably a very ambitious and 'bright' man, but he was 'wasted' on Ebay, which would have done much better over the intervening years with a less ambitious, more laid back, cautious individual in charge who saw the sense in slowly building on what had very solid foundations (and the massive advantage of being the first to the post).
In the rare turnaround for an Internet company, eBay came back–reaching as high as $59.70 a year ago–because of two key factors. The first was PayPal, which eBay bought for $1.5 billion in 2002. The second was CEO John Donahoe, who realigned the company at great effort to not only keep PayPal ascendant but also to revive eBay’s original marketplace.
Right about Paypal, woefully wrong about Donahoe, IMHO.
Ebay could have (and should have) kept it's position as THE online market venue for small traders IF they had kept their wits about them and not wanted so desperately to be something they're not. This article assumes that people are all impulsive and 'trend driven', rather than carefully seeking out bargains. Some people are fashion victims who follow the latest trends for sure, but the vast majority are not, and those who are often grow out of it. Some products certainly do largely sell to a fashionable market (the young and the impressionable), but who were Ebay's main users in the past?
Clue, the guy in that advert wasn't cast at random, most of Ebay's buyers were middle aged, or retired, staid, sensible, careful with their money, but, also modestly affluent. To be honest most long term sellers here also come in to this category - I include myself.
THAT customer base wouldn't have moved if it didn't have to, it's not the kind of customer base to move! It's only moved BECAUSE Ebay was neglected and abused badly. What attracts, and keeps, that kind of customer base is STABILITY and RELIABILITY, look at that other selling venue to see what I mean, they share a percentage of the same customer base. In fact, Ebay SHOULD have been able to grow during the recession years - it had everything it needed for that, the right kind of goods, a massive bank of the right kind of sellers, and the right kind of buyers/reputation. As proof of this (and I'm not saying they're identical, but there are a lot of similarities) that other site not only grew, it thrived during that period - no sign of THAT site 'going stale', is there?
Ebay is a classic example of 'The Grass is Greener', chasing a ridiculous dream, it's pretty much destroyed itself, when what it had was a perfectly sound base to build on successfully. Why has it done it? I think because of it's CEO, who is probably a very ambitious and 'bright' man, but he was 'wasted' on Ebay, which would have done much better over the intervening years with a less ambitious, more laid back, cautious individual in charge who saw the sense in slowly building on what had very solid foundations (and the massive advantage of being the first to the post).
