The eBay Effect - Statistics on eBay

I watched a documentary called the eBay Effect. So I thought I'd post some topics and figures discussed.

Pierre Omidyar founded eBay in 1995. Today eBay is 10 years old and Pierre is only 37 years old. He is one of the wealthiest men in the world.

eBay got traction with people who were looking for collectables such as Pez dispensors and Beanie Babies. After launching the company in 3 years Pierre contacted Meg Wittman to help him manage the huge growth. At the time Meg was a Marketing exec with Hasbros toy division-Marketing Mr. Potatoe Head!

So where are they today? They have
9,000 employees with around 135 million users. If they were a nation-they would be the 9th most populated in the world-per Meg.
If they were employed directly -eBay would be one of the largest emoyers - behind Walmart.

So how much do they sell? Over $80,000 a minute is traded on eBay daily. Over 430,000 people trade on eBay as sellers.

MARKET BREAKDOWN
As far as the breakdown of their market penetration - Germany is the largest market besides the U.S. In fact, 37% of volume comes from Europe with 34 million users. Of those users-10 million are in the UK. The UK had 100% growth this year alone. Around 15% of all eBay trade crosses borders. This needs to increase to have a true global marketplace.

Lets look at Asia. South Korea is eBay Asias' largest market. China is one they have their eyes on. Today their user-base grows by 20,000 users a day eBay is spending over 100 million to solidify their growth in Asia where they are behind other online auctions.

eBAY INCREASES FEES
eBay is full of fees. Over 4.2 Billion dollars are derived from fees. On the average they get around 7% of every sale from a variety of fees. For an online store you will pay $15.95 a month. Sounds cheap-but its the fees for posting items that gets very pricey. Recently, their monthly fee was $9.95 month but just increased to $15.95. Posting a single item in a store went from $1.25 per item to $2 per items. Commission costs per item sold went from 20 cents to 40 cents per item. Over 7,000 stores were closed due to these fee hikes. eBay did this to get people to move items out of stores and into a single sale format to increase their sales volume as these items are easier to find online.

FRAUD
Their security and risk management consists of over 1,000 employees that staff this division. They are tasked with watching for fraud. They don't insure sales of items as it could encourage more fraud. So they watch live, with their teams, trying to stop potential illegal transactions. The best way to avoid any fraudulent transactions is to use PayPal-but its not a safteynet either.

STOCK TANKED
In Jan 2005 eBay lost 15 billion in stock value when it tanked on Wall Street. This was due to large fee increases, fraud and other strategic decisions that caused concerns with investors and analysts. This stock devaluation shook-up Wall Street and Meg. After 7 years as their CEO she almost left to work at Disney. But ultimately decided to stay.

EBAYS FUTURE
Now eBay is focusing on service related acquisitions such as rent.com, PayPal etc. PayPal accounts for 1/4 of their revenues. The other main focus is their move to get further embedded within Asian markets. Meg Whittman describes eBay as the worlds 1st global marketplace in the world. To achieve this lofty goal eBay will need to increase their current 15% sales occurring across-borders-globally.