eBay

stl_vintage · ‎03-17-2025

Hey everybody - just curious if anybody has even thought to check this that sells regularly/run an actual full scale ebay business. So I checked my international sales because of all the stuff going on in the world and since March 1st, I sold a $60 item on the 3rd, going to europe, then another on the 13th, and another on the 14th. All to France and the UK, both for less than $10 each.

Comparatively for March - for us being a vintage clothing store, spring/early spring is a rebound from the lull of the winter, and March is a month we typically pick up. When things are going good, it's $500-$600 a day or so and about 1/6 of that is international sales that typically account for 2-3 daily sales worth around $75 to $100 PER DAY. As you can see above, we're on March 17th, and we've had a total of 3 international sales for the entire stretch. So obviously you see what I'm saying - our international sales have just totally fallen off a cliff, vanished. Normally by the 17th of March we'd have around $1,500-$2,000 type range of international gross sales, down to less than $100.

For those of you looking for a reason as to why ebay is down this and that, it's true they're always a mess, but please take a minute and check your own sales if you sell regularly/run a business on here. There isn't an easy way to filter international isolated out, but you can use your app to manually go through your sales and international sales show up with a little blue mark next to it. I'm just curious to see if this truly is international customers abandoning buying from US sellers like it seems, and I want more info to see if this bumps with others.

jonathanbrightlight · ‎03-17-2025

No particular drop in international sales here (on our selling account). Looks like 7 in the past 10 days. Do you use EIS or do you ship internationally directly?

Volunteer Community Mentor | Posting ID

slippinjimmy · ‎03-17-2025

I experienced an immediate drop in EU orders but that was a number of years ago when eBay was forced to start collecting VAT which on my shipments had been below the 22 Euro exemption.

Since then (5+ years ago) they have slowly been coming back.

20 years ago almost 40% of my sales were to Europe, after the VAT collection started it nosedived to about 10%, in 2024 it was 18%.

There are a lot of possible reasons for a recent decline AND speculating on only 2 weeks of sales activity seems pointless.

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep

stl_vintage · ‎03-20-2025

But the thing is I can't find any stretch of time really where this is even remotely comparable. I'd say the biggest factor is what kind of size of inventory do you sell on ebay and how many daily sales do you tend to get on a regular basis, and typically how does the build of those daily sales look? Is it composed of nearly all domestic and then just has a few thrown in here and there that are international?

I experienced the same thing too when ebay started forcing them to pay VAT up front, that was a big line in the sand. But even still for our business personally we always have a fluctuating level of inventory but hovers between 6,500 listings to 8,500 depending on the time of year. Bad times, 12-20 sales a day with 1 or 2 being international. Q4 more like 25-35 sales a day with international scaling upwards as well. Our business is also somewhat seasonal too, but that's all part of it that we fully understand and have a realistic grasp of what normal looks like for November vs. what normal looks like for February/March.

So I guess I'm trying to clarify that I'm not a jumpy owner that draws unrealistic conclusions based on nothing, it's been 20 days now of March and normally when things are down or doing poorly as per compared to what we consider poor for our store, we'd expect to see 20-35 international sales, if it were a good March more like 50-60. And even now sine the 17th when I wrote my first post on this, we've added 1 more sale. so that's up to 6 total international sales. We have both the ebay global shipping program as well as international shipping open to the world outside of the global shipping program too, so it's not that either. I'm really getting the feeling that more and more people overseas are morally making the decision to not buy from USA sellers, and I don't think from the way we've seen people reacting around the world at public events that this is surprising either.