eBay

dugoldstuff · ‎07-22-2018

Very interesting article. I bolded /redded the best parts:

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4188922-ebay-stagnation-mode

eBay: In Stagnation Mode

Jul. 21, 2018 3:18 PM ET

eBay's second-quarter earnings report fell heavily short of analyst expectations, with revenue growth dimming to 9% y/y (from 12% y/y last quarter). The company's below-consensus guidance caused the stock to take its biggest hit. GMV growth in the U.S. also showed its weakest growth rate since a year ago, while the volume of sold items stayed flat. Margins also showed a worrying contraction.

Despite all the signals that keep pointing to its demise, eBay (EBAY), the one-time e-commerce wunderkind, continues to plod forward as if it was still a giant of the internet. Like last quarter's earnings release, eBay's Q2 post showed a company that is continually unable to meet analysts' targets as the company fails to accelerate the process of bringing new buyers to its platform.

Rightly so, eBay has been one of the worst-performing of the large-cap internet stocks all year, despite general enthusiasm for the e-commerce space. Companies like Etsy (ETSY) and Stitch Fix (SFIX) that were earlier pegged as losers, for example, have shot up meaningfully in the first half of 2018, as has perpetual giant Amazon.com (AMZN). eBay, however, seems incapable of reversing its slow decline. Year to date, the stock is down nearly 10%.

Yet, I believe the shares have further to fall. Activity on eBay seems to simply be running cold. Call it the hangover effects of eBay's fee hikes in the past several years - as sellers walked out on eBay in protestation of higher seller fees and took their variety of wares with them, buyers also saw less and less reason to buy on eBay. One of the things shoppers like most about Amazon is that it's the "everything store," where you can type in even the most obscure of items and find at least one seller that carries it. On eBay, with both the selection and volume of items getting thinner, it's getting harder and harder to bring buyers to the platform and, more importantly, reverse the steep deceleration in GMV growth.

castlemagicmemories · ‎07-23-2018

@hioctane62 wrote:
@everything-from-trinkets-to-treasures wrote:
@castlemagicmemories wrote:
@jason_incognito wrote:
eBay will not seperate used from New.

eBay originally rolled out new as it's own area and it bombed. They finally integrated it into all the rest to make it work.
Yes, I remember that. Ebay Express. It failed.

I think that was when they put store listings into search.

I just think they should offer both, new and used; the greater variety, the larger the buyer base, and that expands as needs occur, building a loyalty and boosting sales, IMO. More variety, greater selection, greater chances of sales.
That is what all those search filters are for...so buyers can narrow down searches. It is in part what they all are doing.
Part of all this is the sites are trying to be similar in some ways to make it easier on buyers...so they do not have to figure how to use and find how to do things for every site they use.
Because we all know that buyers are easily confused, and need to be reassured, have their hand held, wipe their nose, and maybe a nice, warm bottle? I especially like the ones who are confused about what the seller sent them, and send back something completely unrelated, with no value, used, or nothing at all.

With all due respect, not all buyers are easily confused, etc. Anymore than sellers who don't put up accurate listings are.

I'm not saying there aren't scamming buyers just as there are scamming sellers.

There can be bad on either side. I have no illusions.

sharingtheland · ‎07-23-2018

@bubbleman2010 wrote:
Rose their 99 cent fidget spinner sydrome should help folks understand the direction headed.... Huge number of sales but the 99 cent ASP tanked their profits...

Dang. Didn't even think to look here and paid $3.95 (maybe $5.95?) each at Dick's for some that looked like basketballs; the 6-year-olds said no, no, don't make us spend all day using ebay search; buy them here, now, grandma...

Sherry

=^.^= =^.^=
( ) ( )
" " =^.^= " "

carlmarxx · ‎07-23-2018

@castlemagicmemories wrote:
@hioctane62 wrote:
@everything-from-trinkets-to-treasures wrote:
@castlemagicmemories wrote:
@jason_incognito wrote:
eBay will not seperate used from New.

eBay originally rolled out new as it's own area and it bombed. They finally integrated it into all the rest to make it work.
Yes, I remember that. Ebay Express. It failed.

I think that was when they put store listings into search.

I just think they should offer both, new and used; the greater variety, the larger the buyer base, and that expands as needs occur, building a loyalty and boosting sales, IMO. More variety, greater selection, greater chances of sales.
That is what all those search filters are for...so buyers can narrow down searches. It is in part what they all are doing.
Part of all this is the sites are trying to be similar in some ways to make it easier on buyers...so they do not have to figure how to use and find how to do things for every site they use.
Because we all know that buyers are easily confused, and need to be reassured, have their hand held, wipe their nose, and maybe a nice, warm bottle? I especially like the ones who are confused about what the seller sent them, and send back something completely unrelated, with no value, used, or nothing at all.
With all due respect, not all buyers are easily confused, etc. Anymore than sellers who don't put up accurate listings are.

I'm not saying there aren't scamming buyers just as there are scamming sellers.
There can be bad on either side. I have no illusions.

I agree with you! Sad thing is since 2016 for every one scam seller there are million + Scam Buyers out there . Retail industry has lost billions of dollars to scam buyers per month .

dugoldstuff · ‎07-24-2018

> That buyers often do not differentiate between new and used, thinking that the items they are seeing that are using catalog are all new, even though eby allows the inclusion of catalog on used items. This results in buyer dissatisfaction in getting used instead of new and seller dissastifaction because they are getting a snad for sending the buyer exactly what they bought.

That is a good point. I can imagine the buyer frustration of going to a chain clothing store and finding that new and used items were racked together indiscriminately! You'd have to examine everything carefully, and no doubt, there'd be returns.

So by jumbling us all together (sellers with vintage/used items and sellers with new items), eBay has created a model you don't see in brick-n-mortor stores, which tells me it is a model that is not deemed a successful one if you can't point to other examples of it that proliferate throughout the shopping world. In some of the categories here, for instance, there is a drop down menu where the seller can pick from Reproduction, Vintage Original or Antique Original, but the items are all listed in the SAME OVERALL LISTING CATEGORY!

drusalina · ‎07-24-2018

Something else that the search manipulation does is: When you put the key words in the search box, it will automatically put you into a category that has some of those items. But it doesn't always get it right. And Sellers don't always put things in the same category if they have like items. I miss the old plain Key Word Search and keeping the original name of the photos in the listings. That is when we had the best sales. Key words and picture names were searchable by any search engine and eBay was usally on the first page of the browser you were using.

Change the channel!

dugoldstuff · ‎07-24-2018

> Actually that is not true..and they are still making a profit.

But the handwriting seems to be on the wall.

Watch, in the link below, the video entitled, "eBay Continues to Lag rest of e-commerce Market," where one analyst states: "At some point in time, eBay's gonna get this figured out," and "eBay's market cap is a third of PayPal's, and PayPal is the former subsidiary of eBay."

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/19/ebay-stock-drops-after-weak-growth-lowered-revenue-forecast.html

eBay stock has worst day in nearly two years after weak growth, lowered revenue forecast

Shares of eBay fell over 10 percent in trading Thursday.
The online marketplace reported sluggish growth in its marketplace business and lowered its revenue forecast for the rest of the year.
Growth for eBay's subsidiary StubHub is "likely to remain challenging near-term," Raymond James analysts wrote in a note to investors after the report.

Michael Sheetz | @thesheetztweetz

Published 10:41 AM ET Thu, 19 July 2018

Shares of eBay fell over 10 percent in trading Thursday after the company reported sluggish growth in its marketplace business and lowered its revenue forecast for the rest of the year.

This was the worst single day of trading for eBay's stock in nearly two years, as the stock dropped nearly 11 percent on Oct. 20, 2016.

The online marketplace reported second-quarter earnings of 53 cents per share, while revenue came in at $10 billion. While the earnings were 2 cents per share above what analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters anticipated, eBay's revenue came in $50 million short of expectations.

In addition, eBay adjusted its full-year revenue forecast, lowering its estimate to a range of $10.75 billion to $10.85 billion from its previous estimate of $10.9 billion to $11.1 billion.

retrose1 · ‎07-24-2018

@dugoldstuff wrote:
> That buyers often do not differentiate between new and used, thinking that the items they are seeing that are using catalog are all new, even though eby allows the inclusion of catalog on used items. This results in buyer dissatisfaction in getting used instead of new and seller dissastifaction because they are getting a snad for sending the buyer exactly what they bought.

That is a good point. I can imagine the buyer frustration of going to a chain clothing store and finding that new and used items were racked together indiscriminately! You'd have to examine everything carefully, and no doubt, there'd be returns.
So by jumbling us all together (sellers with vintage/used items and sellers with new items), eBay has created a model you don't see in brick-n-mortor stores, which tells me it is a model that is not deemed a successful one if you can't point to other examples of it that proliferate throughout the shopping world. In some of the categories here, for instance, there is a drop down menu where the seller can pick from Reproduction, Vintage Original or Antique Original, but the items are all listed in the SAME OVERALL LISTING CATEGORY!

And the sad thing is that ebay doesn't offer those Item Specifics as an exposed search option on the side bar for several categories - the buyers have to click on see more to get another screen to filter out the new from vintage and still some stuff sneaks through.

One of the reasons Etsy is successful is that they have search options that totally segregate the manufactured new from vintage with one click and if the word vintage is used as a search keyword, Etsy will take the buyer straight to the vintage category. Etsy also monitors the site to make sure that when a buyer asks for something, that is what they are getting in their search results and there is not a lot of keyword spamming in categories.

Department stores and boutiques sell new items, they do not sell used. Thrift shops sell used, but will occasionally sell new items if they manage to pick them up as a donation (but I don't believe they should consider them new anymore since they have changed hands more than once) but their 'new' items they keep in a boutique section in order to differentiate them as special and to justify the higher prices.

Buyers do not go into a thrift store or flea market to look for new items, and they do not go to a mall to look for cheaper used versions of new stuff. That and Etsys way of doing things are the basis for my opinion that ebay should have made the effort to segregate new from used items years ago.

(*Bleep*)

retrose1 · ‎07-24-2018

Here is a simple fact that should be obvious to the ebay head honchos, in many categories used merchandise is selling much better than new stuff. Yet ebay continues to follow the path that new is better.

In the clothing category, if you put in a general search for dresses, for example, you get results of almost 10 million - about 1,350,000 of them are used. When you hit completed/sold about 2 million sold and out of those 875,000 of them are used. That is true for almost all the clothing category. That out of the stuff being offered, the used ones are selling at a higher percentage than the new ones.

I believe that this is the reason for ebay's drive to lowering prices and allowing best offer. That they don't believe that it is the fact that the item is used is the selling point, even vintage items - it is the fact that used items tend to be cheaper thn new ones. So rather than steer into the skid and favor used, it appears that ebay is now attempting to pressure/force/punish/manipulate/reward sellers into cutting into their profit and selling their items cheaper. After all, ebay doesn't own the merchandise, they make the money when the item sells, so if the seller doesn't make any money ebay doesn't have to care since it appears that ebay believes that sellers are easily replaceable.

(*Bleep*)

abfabvintage · ‎07-24-2018

@sharingtheland

Me, too. Disengaged. Lots of dead horses right now. Won't even touch this with a long pole. Lol.

I ain't got the brains to make this up (Fantastic Beasts)

castlemagicmemories · ‎07-24-2018

@drusalina wrote:
Something else that the search manipulation does is: When you put the key words in the search box, it will automatically put you into a category that has some of those items. But it doesn't always get it right. And Sellers don't always put things in the same category if they have like items. I miss the old plain Key Word Search and keeping the original name of the photos in the listings. That is when we had the best sales. Key words and picture names were searchable by any search engine and eBay was usally on the first page of the browser you were using.

Yes, absolutely. A routine search I perform now switches to a particular category, BUT the item may be found in several different categories, depending on how the seller choose to list it. So I have to change it back to all categories or I will miss seeing something I might be interested in. Not labor intensive by any means, but something necessary to be able to have the best chance of finding what I want.

sonoranboutique · ‎07-24-2018

Yeah EBay's seller policies have made it a poor place to buy. I buy a lot of board games. But whenever I go on EBay to buy, the prices are awful compared to Amazon. Sellers have to charge more here. That is because the seller's costs, fees, return policies, and TRS requirements make the cost of selling here too high and too risky. So I have to buy on Amazon.

EBay's policies have become so oppressive that I see more people taking any alternative possible. I have a seller friend who sells really cool vintage clothing. He's a genie with this stuff. But now he only sells his worst stuff on EBay, because he's found other outlets to sell his cool stuff. There are a lot of alternatives nowadays. Retail isn't as bad as it used to be. Social Media has opened a lot of doors. Creating your own web site is much more cost efficient and easier than it once was. The fact is, any seller who wants to succeed in his business must "grow out" of ebay.

With all these policy changes I've been working to "grow out" of ebay myself. It's too risky to sell on a platform where there is no stability. A selling platform should not make major changes more than once every three years or so. Businesses do not like unpredictability and constant changes. Imagine if you signed a three year lease to rent a storefront, but then your landlord started adding a bunch of fees and requirements to your business? EBay has thought for so long they don't need to protect sellers, but their pricing and selection has suffered so much that people are gonna start to notice ebay is a bad place to buy nowadays.

zamo-zuan · ‎07-24-2018

@sonoranboutique wrote:
Yeah EBay's seller policies have made it a poor place to buy. I buy a lot of board games. But whenever I go on EBay to buy, the prices are awful compared to Amazon. Sellers have to charge more here. That is because the seller's costs, fees, return policies, and TRS requirements make the cost of selling here too high and too risky. So I have to buy on Amazon.

EBay's policies have become so oppressive that I see more people taking any alternative possible. I have a seller friend who sells really cool vintage clothing. He's a genie with this stuff. But now he only sells his worst stuff on EBay, because he's found other outlets to sell his cool stuff. There are a lot of alternatives nowadays. Retail isn't as bad as it used to be. Social Media has opened a lot of doors. Creating your own web site is much more cost efficient and easier than it once was. The fact is, any seller who wants to succeed in his business must "grow out" of ebay.

With all these policy changes I've been working to "grow out" of ebay myself. It's too risky to sell on a platform where there is no stability. A selling platform should not make major changes more than once every three years or so. Businesses do not like unpredictability and constant changes. Imagine if you signed a three year lease to rent a storefront, but then your landlord started adding a bunch of fees and requirements to your business? EBay has thought for so long they don't need to protect sellers, but their pricing and selection has suffered so much that people are gonna start to notice ebay is a bad place to buy nowadays.

I have experienced this personally - it is true. If you follow eBay's best practices, you will HAVE to increase your price to make up for the loss of margin.

And then you will get this horrible feeling, as you watch the sellers who do NOT follow best practices move up beyond you in search, because they don't offer free returns/guaranteed delivery, and offer 7 day shipping rather than expedited shipping, and this earns them #1 sales rank???

They think this is an improved buyer experience?? If it's not good for the sellers, it's not good for the buyers either... The more healthy competition = the better experience for buyers.

kathieskorner · ‎07-24-2018

Sellers have to charge more here. That is because the seller's costs, fees, return policies, and TRS requirements make the cost of selling here too high and too risky.

That has never been my experience. Having sold books on both Amazon and eBay - the total fees were higher on Amazon than the ebay+paypal fees. For books Amazon has a flat amount that can be charged for shipping - ebay does not. Now that is not a problem for books weighing less than 3 pounds, but for heavier books it is. There is little difference in return policies - I have never found either site "risky". And my cost of product is the same no matter which site is used.

secretsquirrelisnowhere · ‎07-24-2018

eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY), a global commerce leader, delivered revenue for the quarter ended March 31, 2018 of $2.6 billion, increasing 12% on an as-reported basis and 7% on a foreign exchange (FX) neutral basis, primarily driven by gross merchandise volume (GMV) of $23.6 billion, up 13% on an as-reported basis and 7% on an FX-Neutral basis.

During the quarter, eBay delivered GAAP net income from continuing operations of $407 million, or $0.40 per diluted share and Non-GAAP net income from continuing operations of $548 million, or $0.53 per diluted share. The company generated $495 million of operating cash flow and $337 million of free cash flow from continuing operations while also repurchasing $1.0 billion of its common stock in the quarter.
Second quarter pretty much the same, and third quarter should be the same. Ebay brings in BILLIONS. It's not failing.