@nuclearomen wrote:
I remember how bad things got towards the end of Wenig, ebay's previous CEO before Lannone. But since Lannone seems like everything ebay does is in the wrong direction, sellers are treated in many cases far worse and with less "representation", CS has gone bad to incredibly horrid, site itself is a total mess, sales are at all time low, along with traffic. If you read up on Lannone, find he was COO of Walmart and CEO of Sam's Club (really same company) and though was with ebay in the past, doesn't seem to care about the business of marketplace and it's sellers. Knowing Walmart and Sam's has made billions upon billions patronizing China, cheap products and lame service I'm not so surprised ebay has gotten worse in many aspects since Wenig. Sure there is some good he's done in roll as CEO here, just hard to see what they are (for me).
@nuclearomen - My take on it is COVID ended up being a massive two edged sword for eBay in general and especially for Iannone as CEO.
I think Iannone came into the position knowing he'd be facing an uphill battle as far as trying to get stock performance trending in an upward fashion and other key metrics to keep the board and investors happy - and for the most part over the last year or so they have been happy, but the problem is it's mostly not because of anything intentional that Iannone or anyone else at eBay did, it's because of this situation that caused a massive rise in online shopping in general.
While the "COVID bump" was certainly positive for eBay in a lot of ways, I see two huge negatives as well. The first is that I don't think the eBay infrastructure was prepared for the massive influx of traffic and onsite activity.
I'd have to go back to find the exact quote in one of the videos from the recent eBay Connect Developer's conference, but one of the presenters said something to the effect of at one point in the pandemic they were seeing sustained daily traffic above what they normally see for Black Friday/Cyber Monday.
I can't even imagine the stress and strain on the system and how much of the last year and a half was spent in reactive, "just keep the plates spinning" mode on the tech side of this site - as we've all seen, sometimes they have been more successful than others with those spinning plates.
The other huge negative I see is that I think Iannone, the board, and others at eBay have of known all along that the growth they were seeing was mostly a result of things outside their control that would eventually end and revert back to at least a somewhat more baseline "normal".
I think a lot of what we've seen in the last year can be chalked up to increasingly under pressure executives throwing spaghetti against the wall trying to see what sticks. They seem to be spinning their wheels, rolling out half baked new ideas and initiatives at a rapid pace, on top of just trying to keep the whole thing running and the result is everything you mentioned.
Another real danger I see is that in their rush to find *anything* they can point to as a successful key initiative, they've painted themselves into a corner that won't be easy to get out of. Right now they have bet big on authentication in "key verticals", especially sneakers, and on the surface it seems to be working - but at what cost?
No fees on sneakers over $100, authentication is "free" as is the shipping from authenticator to buyer. They just increased fees on almost everyone else in April, so realistically I think they know they would be treading in deep "stuff" if they tried to do another increase any time soon. Of course they carefully worded the terms of authentication to be "free for a limited time" but again realistically I think they have to know if they flip that switch and start charging for it, the "surge in demand" they have seen will dry up fast.
It's a lot like a few years ago when some genius at eBay decided to start running 5% and 10% off site wide coupons every month - worked great at first, but it doesn't take long for buyers to figure that one out and just sit on their watch list waiting for the coupon to drop, which is exactly what happened. Again, chasing short term gains painted them into a corner.
What eBay needed , in my opinion, was a CEO like Mark Tritton at Bed, Bath & Beyond. He came into that company, faced the facts that the place needed a turnaround, cleaned house by getting rid of a bunch of executives, and got to work. It remains to be seen what the end result will be for BBB, but there are a lot of positive signs there and I respect the fact that he didn't dance around the hard truth that they needed some drastic changes.
I think eBay needed to face some similar hard truths and could have benefited from a similar clean out in the top ranks, but instead it seems like Iannone has not wanted to make waves, maybe thinking he could quietly do what needed to be done behind the scenes and pull off a miracle without rocking the boat? I don't know, but whatever the strategy was (if there was any) it doesn't seem to have made a measurable positive impact separate from COVID.
Iannone doesn't seem like "bad guy" to me, just lacking the experience, vision, and backbone that I think eBay really needed, especially after Wenig. I think he likely knows that they have another quarter or so tops before the jig is up. Who knows what's going to happen then?
Regards,
