eBay Ireland are celebrating their 15th anniversary and the country site is celebrating with a 15% off products from Irish sellers sale. We hear that there’s also cake in Dublin, if you can get there before it’s all eaten.
The history of eBay in Ireland is a little murky as, although it was only eBay’s 12th country site, it slipped into being almost unnoticed and has been a forgotten child ever since. We believe the first eBay Ireland site being celebrated today was simply a way for the Irish to shop on eBay and that a proper launch with real Irish sellers selling on eBay Ireland didn’t actually come until 2005 which would make eBay Ireland 14 years old, not 15.
eBay Ireland’s launch in June 2005 involved four celebs – Rose of Tralee Tamara Gervasoni, Radio DJ Dusty Rhodes, D-Side’s Dane Guiden and Ray Shah from Big Brother – doing a bungee jump from what was then Europe’s tallest bungee crane at 250 feet into the River Liffey. As well as publicising the PR launch of eBay Ireland the stunt raised funds for DebRA Ireland.
The first eBay Ireland General Manager and self proclaimed founder of eBay Ireland was David Jesse who reigned from October 2004 until September 2006. We know that in 2005 eBay Ireland had 200,000 registered users and a year later in 2006 eBay had achieved a sales velocity of selling one item per minute from an Irish registered seller. In October 2007, John McElligott took over as the second eBay Ireland Managing Director followed by Gareth Davis in September 2008.
Since then eBay Ireland has been a little unloved with many Irish buyers still shopping on eBay UK. Ireland don’t even have their own eBay Announcement Board and notices for Irish sellers are posted on the eBay UK Announcement board.
It’s a bit of a missed opportunity – with so many different languages spoken across Europe, one of the most popular second tongues is English – promoting an English language eBay site but with prices listed in Euros could be immensely popular, but it would mean closer alignment with the much greater selection available on eBay UK and convincing UK sellers to accept payments in Euros and at least ship to Ireland and the rest of Europe (actually a breeze for many products these days with eBay’s Global Shipping program).
eBay Ireland may be a little unloved by the rest of the eBay world, but at the time of it’s 15th (or 14th?) anniversary it’s time to celebrate that it exists and look forward to what it can become in the future. With a possible Brexit, there might be a rush by UK sellers to hold stock just across the border in Ireland and if that happens there’ll be no reason not to list on eBay’s Irish site alongside the other eBay sites in the EU.
2 Responses
Adverts is the main site Ireland, and I would say Amazon is used in the UK a LOT more than eBay ever has been.
Mainly it is the price UK sellers charge that puts the buyers off.
Before thinking you can set up a warehouse in Ireland to keep your EU trade you might want to have a little look at some of the competition and how it actually works in Ireland and AN Post are actually very expensive,and slow.
We looked at moving over to Ireland couple years ago and eBay said they would switch us to eBay.i.e., ran some tests on the site it was dead. My best friend who lives over in Swords say there is never anything on the site, and my Irish partner has never even had an eBay account and she shops for sport.
Guys, we opened our doors and our first employees joined us in Dublin in 2004. So 15 years it is and there’s no way we’re waiting another year to celebrate. And the birthday cake was delicious 🙂