eBay UK has announced that it is to launch a new fashion sub-site for branded clothing. Mark Lewis, eBay UK’s MD, made the announcement at the Retail Week Conference.
The new site, at fashion.ebay.co.uk, will offer more photography and a browsing interface in place of the normal eBay “list”. From the RW report, it seems that the new site will be limited to major retailers, as in response to a question, Mark Lewis said that the new site would focus on “sellers able to sell branded items in volume”.
Smaller sellers in the CSA categories, meanwhile, are likely to wonder when a public announcement of this change is likely to be made. It’s a major threat to any smaller business who will be excluded from the site, and should have at least had a follow-up announcement made where every eBay seller could read it.
It seems likely that fashion will not be the last area targetted by eBay in this way, as Mark Lewis spoke of the need to offer a more “segmented user experience” on eBay. The new site is due to roll out in around two months: more details when we get them.
Update 05/03/2010
Don’t get too excited. We’ve been told by eBay that this is basically a rebranding of Outlets. The “Outlets” tab will go, and be replaced with “Fashion”. Any outlets which aren’t fashion-based will be linked from an “Outlets” tab from the fashion site.
23 Responses
Will the “sub-site” be focusing on last years fashions 😀
Bench’ must think xmas has come early, not only does nearly every clothing outlet suppply the nations chavs, now they get a dedicated site. chavclobber.ebay.co.uk
Shouldn’t they sort out the shopping experience on the main site first? Shopping cart, improved checkout, best match etc.
If I was a small clothing seller I would be very concerned at buyers been directed to a micro site rather than getting to search all sellers.
What will be next media? gaming?
I feel another ebat express coming on….that was what it was called wasn’t it?
Talk about take the focus off the main site…and I wonder if there will be DSR’s & feedback there..I think not.
Stu
So the likes of Argos outlet will be reached via people knowing to click on “Fashion”, then navigate to “Outlet”, then find Argos?
That’ll cheer them up loads 😐
Hmmm right so bugger all really.
Ebay really are going for bigger retailers for the site aren’t they!
Something I just don’t get as there is no niche there, but then their choice!
Hmm, this is all starting to fit together. The ‘invitation only’ segmentation looks like it’s designed to tackle a number of ebay’s priority issues:
1. Effective removal / sidelining of non-niche lower volume sellers in favour of larger volume, established brands. If you don’t sell something unusual, or provide a differentiated, specialised service, then this will make life very, very difficult.
2. Revision of feedback / seller performance. ‘New’ site, new rules. Wouldn’t be surprised to see the comments disappear and just leave DSRs. Again, the DSR based regime is clearly designed to be very tough for low volume sellers and relatively lenient for high volume sellers.
3. Decluttering of search results. From (temporariliy) removing international visibility to best match, eBay has been struggling with how to tackle this.
A few years down the road, the top bar may look a lot like Amazon, with all the segments populated by ‘Outlets’. Which would leave a smaller ‘heritage’ site for private / small businesses. eBay might even choose to sell off that element.
Looks like eBay had a thought along the lines of ‘Why does 80% of our work come from 20% of our volume?’
Way to go eBay.
Is this the first move back to a category based search?
Bring it on.
E-bay is being corporatized. New DSR system to squize out the regular sellers and small businesses in exchange for setting up a new platform for industrial giants.
It will good to see the cheap high street clothing being sectioned off. As a buyer I would not touch some of these outlets, they seem to have big issues with stock control.
great news for us smaller retailers that should thin the listings out a bit until they revert back cant remember what the last attemt at this was called i still have the brochure,no sorry binned it,please throw the switch for me ebay last 3 days zero same 3 days last week 87 sales