EbayExpress Caters to Inventory Concerns

By Staff -- Home Textiles Today, 7/31/2006 12:00:00 AM

San Jose, Calif. —

Ebay, which claims 203 million registered users in 33 countries, is promoting its www.ebayexpress.com section, which provides fixed-price products from its highest-quality sellers, aimed at time-pressed consumers in search of convenient shopping solutions.

Regular Ebay listings that match certain criteria are automatically (for no extra charge) listed on EbayExpress as well. The criteria: the seller must be U.S.-based, have a very high customer feedback record from a minimum of 100 transactions, and must take credit card or Paypal payments. Currently about one fourth of all Ebay postings are mirrored on EbayExpress.

Unlike the postings on the main site, EbayExpress listings are “sorted by relevance,” meaning they appear in order based on the search terms used by a shopper. Sellers can get access to search patterns of different demographic groups, and other consumer data, from Ebay.

Ebay quietly launched www.ebayexpress.com on April 24. After three months of testing, the company is ready to bang the drum with a major marketing campaign.

Ebay director of Home & Garden John McDonald said that his division already counts thousands of home textiles products for sale. Companywide the average turn for a product is less than two weeks, and he sees EbayExpress as a favorable solution for retailer and suppliers to reduce inventories.

Ebay reported $1.4 billion in revenues for the second quarter. Revenues come mainly from sellers' posting fees and commissions on sales; McDonald said the total volume of transactions via Ebay was $12.9 billion for the quarter.