eBay has launched Catch by eBay, a new mobile app platform brings together the hottest trending products at the best prices with a visual-first experience, in Germany.
First up Catch by eBay makes us here at Tamebay think of two things.
- It’s similar to in some ways to Amazon Scout which has just been released.
- We can’t imagine that the Catch marketplace in Australia will be best pleased at the choice of name Catch by eBay. Currently we are told that Catch by eBay is exclusive to the German market – it would probably not a good move for eBay to port the app for their Australian customers.
Catch promises a new shopping experience to bring fun, inspiration and value by offering cool, trendy and unexpected products at the best prices. Catch caters to users who love to browse and to discover. The platform specifically addresses the young value shoppers, a big group among the millennial segment, who want to discover the newest and hottest products at great prices, shop spontaneously and have high expectations for service and engaging, fun experiences. Catch brings together the best of value inventory from eBay’s sellers from Germany as well as from all over the world.
Everything on Catch by eBay is under €20, not too dissimilar a proposition to eBay Under £10 which was launched in the UK earlier this year. A similar ‘Under €20’ offering in Germany has proven successful leading to the launch of Catch by eBay.
This proposition also sounds very similiar to Wish and Tophatter, although it has been said that these sites are riddled with unrealistically high RRPs for generally very low value products. If eBay open Catch by eBay to Chinese sellers then they will need to avoid the same trap – users are not mislead by inflated RRPs and are also intolerant of shoddy goods that don’t live up to the promise.
In addition to traditional product categories such as Fashion, Home and Tech Gadgets, Catch brings to users an experience of thematic product “worlds”, allowing them to shop the way they live – whether it be Wanderlust for the avid traveler, or Pink Wall for one who is excited about anything in the pastel hue. The combination of Catch’s trend-spotters, tastemakers and data scientists allows the platform to create these worlds and tailor them directly for what’s relevant to value-oriented millennials, bringing the best of eBay’s vast inventory to the Catch experience. eBay is launching Catch as a beta version exclusively in the German market.
“Through our ability to identify emerging shopping patterns via the eBay platform, the success of our ‘Under 20€’ experience launched earlier this year, as well as market monitoring, we identified a big opportunity for us to address the younger value shoppers in Germany in a different way. While many younger value shoppers feel attracted by the eBay experience, many also enjoy a more browse-focused experience – especially with regard to more discovery-focused categories like Fashion or Home Decoration. This is what we intend to serve for with Catch: It is much more an inspiration, browse and check-it-often type of site filled with lots of trending inventory and, thus, a complementary platform to eBay. We very deliberately decided for an off-eBay experience – yet, one that leverages the best of eBay’s strengths like the breadth of eBay’s inventory, eBay’s vast inventory data or eBay’s trust & safety tools. This is enabled through eBay’s extensive API service for inventory and transaction processing.”
– Eben Sermon, eBay Managing Director, Germany
