"All this started in Feb when we had the worst sales month ever."
February is about when I realized my sales had fallen off of a cliff. Usually they slow way down over the holidays, then start to pick up by mid-January, but that didn't happen this year. The only items that sold well since the holidays were "big ticket" electronic test gear, which typically I was the only seller of, or was lowest-priced.
What the eBay folks are completely missing is that what made eBay great was being able to find pretty much anything and everything on eBay. I began selling in 1999 because I found that I could sell pretty much anything and everything on eBay. One person's trash literally is another's treasure, and that's what put eBay in business. But, over the years the eBay philosophy has obviously changed, and now the business model looks more like the "Wall Street" model of profit-uber-alles; "forget about purpose and service, just generate more profit" by eliminating all but the most profitable sellers and items.
In the past, rare but obscure treasures may have been listed for months or years, but eventually they'd sell to people who were thrilled to have found them, and equally thrilled that those treasures weren't just disposed of in a landfill, smelter, wherever. BUT, instead of exploiting that model and applying promoting-technology to expose those obscure treasures to peole who might be likely to buy them, eBay has apparently decided "big box" is where it's at; they want to become another "Amazon" and transform we sellers into worker-drones. Problem is, that business model is simply unsustainable, and that's rarely an official conclusion until after the horse is certified-dead; the greatest lesson in history is that people rarely learn anything from history. (And if they do, it's rarely remembered for long.)
Bottom line, the eBay story should be that after opening a store your traffic and sales should increase by over 60%, otherwise eBay isn't doing their job, fulfilling their purpose, etc.
"Racketeering"
