Could an “eBay killer” marketplace emerge in the UK?

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There has been decent discussion about Buuy.co.uk after our recent post: Buuy.co.uk launches crowdfunding campaign to increase server capacity. There is tangible interest in the emergence of a third marketplace, it seems. From a seller perspective at least.

And the chat has revisited a very welcome topic: could we ever see genuine challenger to the Amazon and eBay duopoly when it come to marketplace sales? Of course, there are other players in the marketplace space. Etsy is significant but currently under scrutiny. And NotOnTheHighStreet is well regarded by many sellers. But it is hard to consider either of those as a significant other.

Indeed, there is a case to make that eBay is lagging behind the all conquering Amazon. Two years down the line from the PayPal divorce, it’s fair to say that most eBay watchers would have wanted to see more. A bag of innovation. Exciting developments. That’s what the freedom to be a marketplace should have led to. And yet the daily concern of recent weeks from loyal eBay sellers seems to have been fear and worry about sharing contact details with shoppers. This has been the most viewed Tamebay post in recent days: Don’t try to give buyers your contact details in eBay Messages.

Competition is a good thing. eBay remains a most viable sales channel. But has it rediscovered it’s pizzazz? It’s hard to say so. Challengers such as Buuy need to prove themselves but it is positive to hear sellers talking them up and claiming decent enough sales to justify their time listing on the marketplace.

The ecosystem desperately needs a relentless third player. Amazon won’t notice, it never does, but eBay will benefit from an exciting marketplace yapping at its heels. Could a third marketplace player emerge in the UK? We hope so. What would you like it to look like?

It might not be an ‘eBay Killer’. But perhaps even just an ‘aide memoire’ competitor would have a positive impact?

21 Responses

  1. I think there’s certainly a demand for it

    Just read the boards so many sellers are completely frustrated with ebay

    Its become expensive, the traffic is low and it feels like they’re only interested in promoting the sellers of large inventories, 35000 plus feedback accounts, Items with barcodes etc and now the contact detail crackdown..
    As see my website and social media as my future

    I feel like another marketplace could really take off quickly. the demand is there. Small business need a flexible platform that can empower them.

    the problem is the cost of building a functioning platform, managing buyers and sellers and getting enough buyers to the site when the internet is already saturated with big companies spending big money on Adwords

    Buuy are doing everything right to attract sellers .. but I tried searching on my iPhone and it doesn’t even work.

  2. never going to happen unless whoever has a go at it
    gets the .co.uk were britsh bit out of their thinking.

    international sales account
    for at least 75% of our higher value sales

  3. Well we opened a Buuy store up a couple of weeks ago. Why NOT, it has not cost a dime. We are not going daft on it we have added a few nice products and not the entire inventory, and we are pricing very well.
    eBay as far as we are concerned is finished for sellers of our level. Algorithms are set to push Hattrells friends at places like Music Magpie who are marketplace killers.
    What ebay forget is they a biting the very hands who got those big customers on to their site (and trust me they do not want to be on eBay’s site long term).
    Anyway it is pointless now anyway with eBay, and it will be Amazon who actually finish them for good.
    Buuy are new and it will attract the sellers before the buyers us Brits are so preprogrammed to “brands”, but we are being ripped off by these brands. Buuy sellers will have to do it on price and do a little bit of DIY marketing, already you are hearing those with some weird expectations, a reality check is required.
    Where ebay try to hide our own brands, Buuy let us promote our own brands. Thing is Buuy are doing this correct, unlike the rest look at OnBuy all talk and no action. All the mirkal markets are much the same and do not give you the buybox, we have already basically dropped two off them. We had one of them on the phone the other day blah blah blah heard it all before.
    Buuy is the long game and we are not expecting much at all to begin with but we are holding out hope we need something to get away from eBay and Amazon in this country these sites are not good overall places to do business. We need a market for the smaller (UK) trader and actual Private sellers, Buuy is the one who has the most potential, wish them all the luck.

  4. BLIND FAITH AND CHANCES DONT PAY THE BILLS

    ebay have an .co.uk site and many other country specific domains, because they are international,
    EVEN 20 years ago WHEN EBAY WERE small and growing you could sell internationally

  5. well with nothing to lose, i’ve chucked 200 odd products onto buuy.co.uk now, we’ll see how it goes.
    bulk importer was mildly frustrating, but got there in the end.
    for a marketplace looking to pinch ebay custom, they could make their bulk import far more ebay-seller friendly, i resorted to using our shopify export rather than the ebay export because it was much closer to the buuy format.
    – on that note, shopify have an import button, I’m sure buuy would attract a lot more sellers from ebay if the prospect was “click this button, you’re now a buuy seller with all your ebay products & categories imported”.

    also we use a lot of multi-variation listings, i dont see a way for buuy to support that, i’d have imported half our catalogue (rather than just 200 listings) if there was an easy variation listing import.

    even if i never sell a product on buuy, i’ve lost an hour or so that wasn’t being that productively spent otherwise. sell one item and i can totally justify that investment.

  6. time costs money, time cant be replaced ,we all only get a finite amount,
    buuy will need to show results, before we give them our time or enhance their site free of charge

  7. Anyone know how they handle orders, etc?

    Is there an API for importing and updating orders?
    The same goes for handling inventory.

    Seems odd that they’ve launched without a mobile app in 2017.

    Just wandering before we consider porting our products over to their systems.

  8. No one’s going to be an ebay killer when the first things to greet you on their homepage are full size cheap 3rd party banner ads & an unbelievably dated looking design.

    Seriously, if ‘the first bite is with the eye’, then these guys are dead before they start; both etsy & notonthehighstreet at least look and function attractively.

  9. I’m going to give buuy a chance. Never had faith in the latest re-launch of onbuy, but buuy looks promising.

    No costs and I’m going to copy my 75,000 listings across from Ebay via csv

    Then wait to see if anyone bites. About half an hour’s effort and no fees.

  10. All I can say is it is working for me, I am getting sales and not much time and effort involved.
    As for the APP I understand that is in development, as for the landing page that is also being re-designed. Most of these questions being asked or concerns have already been answered in their forum. ( The guys themselves answer the questions )

    If people want to knock it let them, less competition for those that are listing and selling. I have had sales on both platforms so I wont be complaining.

  11. The main issue with 3rd parties is integration to multi-channel software… If you are already selling on eBay, Amazon, you own site etc chances are you have 3rd party software managing your stock and orders.

    If the 3rd party software can’t link to the new site then you will be stuck managing stock for potentially little return on the time spent.

    We sell mainly on eBay and Amazon – we have tried other sites like Cdiscount (waste of time and effort including hiring a French speaker to do human listing translation) and Fruugo (who expected us to commit to adding X amount of products a week before they would make any of our products live – great way to see if the site would bring us a single sale), Rakuten (well we all know how that ended…). These sites do link to our 3rd party software. However, most of them have either ridiculous expectations or no traffic to bring the sales in.

    Many see new sites as a “chicken and the egg” situation – sellers are needed to bring in buyers but buyers are also needed to bring in the sellers. We can’t invest time in something that brings in no return – might as well add another 1000 products to eBay and Amazon instead with that time.

    eBay and Amazon will continue to be the markets of choice as that’s where the bulk of buyers are and buyers are where the money is.

  12. With eBay’s insideos treatment of the sellers that made them, an ‘eBay killer’ is welcome in the eyes of an alarmingly growing army of sellers. Of course the arrogance of the top goons at eBay will not realise that, which one way or another is why eBay will die within ten years. Eventually they will be seen as ‘that ecommerce site that dropped the ball big time’.

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