Regards,
@domin-tomas wrote:Down about 200% from 3 years ago and 70% from last year. I talked to my kids who are in there 20's and 30's and asked if they or there friends shop ebay, there response was no they don't and there friends don't talk about ebay. Maybe ebay should promote to the younger generation. Just saying.
@domin-tomas Our kids, nieces and nephews are older 20 to 30 years old. They use Amazon and most have Prime accounts. They donate a lot of their empty boxes to us LOL! If any of them purchase on eBay it is rare.
You hit on something I have been thinking about for a while now. eBay's hey day is over, they are not going to ever put a dent in Amazon's market share for new products. I am sure they are trying to grab the demographics of their Buyers' base to figure out what to do 10 years from now. I think the typical Buyer on eBay is 45 years or older, I know I sell to a lot of retired Buyers because I am in collectible categories. I also think the hey day of "collecting" is over and with Baby Boomers moving through retirement and downsizing Buyers for collectibles will continue to decline.
I get messages from many Buyers that the thing they purchased was something their father or grandfather had when they were a kid.
I look at something like antique and vintage board games. They were hot items when I was growing up but back then there was no internet and certainly no smart phones ... playing board games was a blast. That has changed drastically with the advent of smart phones. Teenagers now spend most of their time on their mobile devices ... rolling the dice and moving game board pieces does not hold their attention for very long if at all.
You can extend that thinking right through model building, playing with Barbies, Power Rangers, etc.
I'm seeing some slowing at work, but that's mostly related to the fact that we had to let our primary listing person go (I'm still working on correcting mistakes from her last 2-3 months) -- no regular posting tends to lower sales for us.
I'm also in the process of 'recycling' our oldest listings -- we have some listings that were posted in 2019 and still haven't sold! Those need to be ended, the listing revisited to determine if we should even be trying to sell it, and if so, revamping title, description, pricing, Item Specifics, and then reposting. We do get good sales from those reposted listings - around 10-20% sell within a week or two.
My kids, spread thru their 30's, are all Amazon shoppers. Youngest even laughs at me when I tell him I can find it cheaper on eBay -- he's more "Rock Auto has your parts - just order from there and keep it simple". When it comes to car-related stuff, the boys either order thru their respective dealerships or from car part specialists like Rock Auto. They don't trust the quality of online venues like eBay or Amazon.
My wife is all about Amazon Prime, but not for shopping (she hates shopping of any kind - hard to keep her dressed and with decent shoes!) -- she uses Prime for her Kindle books and for Amazon Video, which is in definite competition with Netflix for #1 TV site. We don't watch much broadcast TV anymore - mostly just the nightly news and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. I'm the same - Science channel, History channel, anything but the broadcast drivel. You can sink Love Island and I wouldn't even notice. And all those "find love, get married publicly, get divorced privately" 'reality' shows.... don't watch, don't care. Not my monkey, not my circus.
But like a lot of sellers, I do shop a lot on eBay. Mostly for things similar to what I sell, I've noticed. Parts for my truck, parts for my computers, occasionally something special like a small wire shelving unit for my room. My desk came from work. My furniture was purchased 37 years ago at one of the premier Memphis furniture stores...and it still looks wonderful. The cheaper stuff we impluse-bought, like couches, have been replaced more than once, but we expected that.
It used to be fun to have folks ask me if I sold things on eBay - they saw my "Trading Assistant" and "Power Seller" window stickers and were curious. One young lady even thought I'd bought my truck on eBay (pre-eBay Motors) since I had a multi-color eBay logo in the front window (lower-right, not affecting driving vision). When I talked to business owners about their consignment needs, they were interested and viewed eBay as a good place to deal with their overstock. Today - not so much.
I think it's time to shelve the "Disuptive Innovation" and switch to "Stability Integration". Keeping the site stable, properly functioning, and with minimal changes-for-the-sake-of-change 'upgrades'. I know everyone thinks the site should look like something I would have seen at the kids' daycare in the 80's, but that's now business, that game play. Retail is not a game. Amazon does not look or act like a game. And they sell a LOT of stuff. I'll bet there's a connection....
And those eBay Catalog pages!! I can't count the number of times I've scanned a UPC code from a retail product I have in my hand and get ePID records for everything but what I'm holding!! Or I get the right product, but the Catalog title is for a case lot, the picture is a single unit, and the pricing is all over the place. Some of that is sellers who don't know how to use case UPC codes or eBay's Lot Size setting. But there are steps eBay can take as well to get this under control and cleaned up. While few shoppers search by UPC code, sellers do list by UPC code and should be able to do so faster and without having to filter thru so much chaff to find that kernel of grain.
But enough of my rants... I'm just happy to hear that eBay is at least talking about making changes to make selling via Best Offer a bit better. If they can install the changes they need without trashing the rest of the site, I'll be happier.
-Bob.
