Tanya Lawler VP eBay UK to leave eBay

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Tanya Lawler 2014This morning Tanya Lawler, Vice President of eBay UK met with eBay employees to announce that that she is quitting for pastures new.

eBay told us “Tanya has been a senior leader at eBay for the past four years, joining as VP of UK trading and quickly becoming appointed as VP of the UK business. She has overseen a period of tremendous innovation in the UK business, from the innovative partnership with Argos, to the recent launch into new categories like Wine, Adult and Curve fashion“.

What we’ve really seen under Tanya’s stewardship is eBay transitioning to a more retail like experience, both for buyers and for sellers. For too long eBay struggled with it’s roots as an online auction site and how to managed it’s hundreds of thousands of professional sellers each of whom operate with different service and standards.

Tanya cut through the difficulties of a trading platform comprised of disparate retailers with programs such as Click and Collect at Argos, giving even the smallest sellers a big retailer type solution. We’ve also for the first time in eBay’s 20 year history, seen the start of eBay flexing their muscles to obtain discounts for sellers. The fledgling eBay fulfilment network with drop off at Argos is in place. We can only hope that Tanya’s successor will have the same vision to extend these programs and introduce more retail solutions for small independent retailers.

Tanya has also overseen drastic changes in how seller performance is measured reducing the number of ways sellers can incur a defect to just two, both of which are under the seller’s control.

eBay tell us that Tanya has “kindly agreed to stay in post until our Q4 execution was in progress – but she is not in a position to announce her career plans just yet“.

Tanya’s successor will transition into the role early in 2017. We’re not allowed to say who it will be yet, but there was no internal succession plan so it is some one from outside the eBay business.

15 Responses

  1. No loss.

    Shut the door on your way out.

    Maybe her successor will deal with the real issues facing sellers, namely the constant site problems every single day.

  2. “Tanya has also overseen drastic changes in how seller performance is measured reducing the number of ways sellers can incur a defect to just two, both of which are under the seller’s control” ???

    Really ????

    In what way is it under the seller’s control, if the delivery company fails to deliver on time ????

    Especially if it’s a smaller item and you’ve got to use Royal Mail.

    You can test their delivery record for yourself for the cost of £6.40.

    Go to the next town and post 10 1st class letters back to yourself.

    See how many arrive next day. Five, six, maybe seven if you’re lucky.

    How on earth can any seller meet these requirements when carrying firms don’t live up to their own propaganda.

    As for being protected by using tracking – you’re having a laugh !

    The tracking protection does not work. Ebay has just made an announcement apologising for the fact today.

    Get RID of the whole defect concept.

    REWARD sellers for prompt despatch instead of hitting them with a stick if couriers / Royal Mail let them down.

    Things will then get better and sellers won’t have to play the system to avoid being downgraded unfairly.

  3. When my MP wrote to her highlighting the massive VAT evasion issue on eBay by Chinese suppliers she was very dismissive and unhelpful.

    Now we have the law in place and perhaps her successor will take this issue seriously.

  4. The defect system last year was outrageous totally unfair and unjustified, bringing it down to two defects (even if they are out of your control, and you are measured on another person’s performance), but a lot better than last year.
    Building some sort of logistics network was needed. I would like to see RMG and eBay actually work better, they actually need each other more and more and do not seem to get this. The click and buy system attached to eBay and OBA is a start (if we can just get eBay address’s actually CORRECT would be nice.
    Biggest issue eBay still has is security you simply do not feel it is a safe platform to trade on. It is the platform that causes 99% of issues. Basically INR 99% of the time.
    Ever who replaces is going to have to be innovative and quick as eBay are going to lose ground. I would also hope they would engage with smaller sellers than just likes of Tescos. Tanya liked to say how eBay UK supports small Business all I have seen is more coverage for multi and national chains.

  5. Tamebay makes Tanya seem like some incredible person who will be sadly missed…… really ?
    What has she done for the smaller sellers who spend their paypal money back on ebay, rather than the bigger business sellers ?
    As others have pointed out, she hasn’t managed to fix the everyday problems faced by so many of us, so what is so wonderful about her ?
    I know the readership here consists of a very wide variety of people., but it seems to me that yet again tamebay is very out of touch with the opinions of many of us, when you praise this woman as if she has solved most of our problems, rather than leaving whilst most of the problems are the same or worse than when she arrived !

  6. I am sure this lady is very nice and probably very good at her job
    which is to make money for Ebay,
    sellers are to be used just like printer paper in the hopper

  7. This woman will not be missed. I remember when Tamebay used to be on our side. Now all they do is polish eBay’s shoes. They no longer broadcast the problems we all know that eBay need to fix. Tamebay likes the tickles on the chin from eBay …..Tamebay has been tamed. It’s lost it’s backbone!

  8. Another one running for the life boats, they seem to come promise the world screw eBay up a bit more and when the “improvements” are worse than before they started quit and run.

    I wonder what her replacement will screw up next ?

  9. Some of those changes have been very welcome.

    I certainly won’t miss her speaking at catalyst etc. Gave some of the worst talks I have seen. Spouting vacuous cliches and explaining the basics of selling on ebay as if we didn’t know.

  10. Andy R. Well said. Good riddance. Goodbye! Let’s hope whomever takes her role oversees a wholesale change to defects and also considers how high fees are preventing or at least discouraging high ticket item sellers from trading profitably.
    Not to mention the daily site issues. Bulk Editor, cross promotions not showing in Chrome, messaging etc (granted – that may not be her remit).
    Ebay need a senior VP who is actually in touch with sellers and their needs.

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