eBay is Dead... Long live eBay!

Are we watching eBay’s last stand, or have the pre-owned upstarts woken the second-hand bear?

The pre-owned market is massive. Look, when it comes to the rise of the second-hand side hustle, the cat’s been out of the bag so long, it’s had kittens. Honestly, we’re just surprised some entrepreneur hasn’t tried listing them on Gumtree. The thing about growing markets though, is that they don’t just get bigger, they evolve. Sure, some folks have always opted for a second-hand car, fashionistas know style never goes out of fashion, and canny musicians have their own reasons for chasing used instruments and gear (check this link if you want to know why). Over the last few years though, the rest of the planet has caught up. We could write a whole blog about why second-hand is the new… er, well, new, (in fact we did just that and you can read it here). Today, however, we’re going to talk about the consequences of the recycled retail rush.

The fact that the pre-owned market is massive is not news. That cat’s been out of the bag so long you can probably find a listing for its kittens somewhere on Gumtree. The real news is that the second-hand market has a new king, and if you’ve read our headline then you’ll know the new monarch is just the old one with a new set of robes. So, how did eBay pull off its own coup? Well, to get that answer we need to go back in time about 170 years.

In 1859 when Darwin’s leather-bound opus The Origin of the Species set the world ablaze, he could not have known that his evolutionary thesis might itself one day evolve beyond his control. The metaphor is best explained in four words, Survival of the Fittest. If it’s good enough for life, then it’s good enough for business and so back to the beaten track we go.

In business, those who evolve live to trade another day and those who can’t? Well, there’s a special space for them, let’s call it MySpace. Of course, like the Galapagos, there are pockets where awkward critters still cling to the mortal coil with their tails long after their cousins have ditched theirs. This is true in the business world too. In locations where newfangled fads can’t take hold due to geography, lack of resources, or in the case of Blockbuster Video, Anchorage, Alaska, no reliable Wi-Fi, these relics linger in defiance of convention. This ain’t the norm though, in pretty much all other cases, if you can’t compete, you die.

This was the world that dotcom originalist eBay found itself in this week. To its left, the superorganisms like Vinted seemingly growing at an exponential rate. At its heels, the ravenous Etsy, heel bent on consuming all in its path. In every direction the lumbering giant was surrounded by quick witted disruptors, lean tech-centric niche platforms from the far East, and the digital mutated offspring of bloated old-school brick and mortar retail behemoths. According to Darwin, eBay had two choices and let’s face it, flight would have led to a very different article. So, the mighty eBay had no other option but punch back. Sure, we could have just said eBay, announced this week that it’s scrapping almost all its seller fees, but that doesn’t do the facts justice. Anyone could have just said, ‘oh, yeah eBay were getting hammered by the rampant ascent of its many competitors and decided to scrap seller fees’, but only we told you the truth. Only Riloop took the time to explain how the king of second-hand castles is weathering the siege.

Now, you know the truth, here’s the blink-and-miss-it moments. eBay hasn’t scrapped fees completely, but it has removed fees for sellers with under 300 listings. If you’re a bigger player you’ll get 400 free listings, but expect to pay fees on the rest. eBay is also sticking with its fees for promoted listings, reserve price auctions and a load of other upgrades. Only time travellers and future historians know if eBay’s last-ditch effort worked, or if this is indeed its final stand. For now at least, it seems eBay is still swinging and as we said at the top of the ticket… fair play to them.

The classified king is dead…. long live the classified king.