Did You Know? 80% of all items sold on eBay.ca are new?

[pierrelebel]

Please take a look at:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/careers-leadership/ebay-canadas-andrea-sta...

A must read for all serious eBay.ca sellers.

[femmefan1946]

The reporter spends a lot of time on Ms. Stairs' personal life, doesn't she?

[mr.elmwood]

That is a junk article.

[momcqueen]

I gather that this is a personality profile so that explains the focus on the subject as opposed to the corporation but this section concerns me somewhat: "The company has recently hired seasoned retail executives to steer it toward offering merchandise that its research indicates its shoppers will covet, rather than just operating as a tech firm peddling sellers’ own product choices."

Note this is not a direct quote nor paraphrase and it has not been attributed to the subject so it may just be conjecture on the part of the reporter.

The boldface is mine. 

[pierrelebel]

The reason I posted a link to this article was for Canadian members to understand the impact of:

"...eBay Canada in early 2009, after the company’s U.S. parent dramatically scaled back its operations and left her with just five staff members."

That's it folks.  A grand total of six management and staff members - located in Toronto - for all of Canada.

[momcqueen]

That number refers to staffing levels six years ago. Surely it can't still be the case, can it?

Is this where we learn there are only three people left at eBay Canada headquarters?

Does that mean the 'teams' are freelance-type consultants?

[pierrelebel]

It means eBay-Canada is much smaller than most posters imagine. When in Toronto, go visit their office on King Street West.

Many expect too much from a small group of people overseeing one billion dollar worth of purchases by Canadians and depending on actions or decisions made in San Jose.

[rose-dee]

This subject brings another question to mind: does anyone really know how many Canadian sellers there are on eBay (very round figures)?  If not, any educated guesses?

I don't recall seeing that statistic anywhere, nor do I think the eBay staff would tell us.  

[pierrelebel]

This is the type of information eBay Inc - a public company - does not release.  Staff is not allowed to even hint at an answer.

[rose-dee]

You've been around a while here -- any educated "guesstimates"?

[pierrelebel]

No.

[pierrelebel]

I will let you do the work.

Take a look at

https://static.ebayinc.com/static/assets/Uploads/PressRoom/eBay-Factsheet-Q2-2015.pdf

According to eBay they have approximately 157,000,000 buyers and 25,000,000 sellers

Now we know Canada accounts for about 2%/3% of the total eBay picture

As you can extrapolate, it is a very large number.

[sylviebee]

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@rose-dee wrote:

This subject brings another question to mind: does anyone really know how many Canadian sellers there are on eBay (very round figures)?  If not, any educated guesses?

I don't recall seeing that statistic anywhere, nor do I think the eBay staff would tell us.  

---

That's a question I find interesting as well.

Raw statistics don't shed light on it, but you can get a feel for the number of eBay sellers in your city.

If you do a search and then select for items close to you it's possible to get a hint of what's happening around you.

Most sellers list more than one item/category so it's very general but it does help to make it a little more concrete.

[sylviebee]

Oops .........  I'd like to take that back.   When I search for my own items and select for items closest to me, I don't even show up in the search and I should be first.

That's odd and very unexpected.

[pjcdn2005]

Whenever I've tried searching for listings close by the results haven't been very accurate. I just tried

a search just now for items within 200km of me and although my items did come up, they weren't at the top of the list. The

listings above mine were over 2,000km away.

Then I tried the same search 200km away within Canada only. I didn't think that it was necessary to specifiy Canada in the first search because I'm more than 200km away from any border but that search did bring up my items first and then one item from Ontario and the rest in the U.S. 2000+ km away.

As far as the article goes....definitely a fluff piece but I did realize that there are only a few people who work at ebay Canada. I imagine that they have limited input into any changes being made that affect us.

[sylviebee]

It does make one question the way the system searches because there is clearly some manipulation going on.

Yes, the article was a sales pitch for eBay and nothing more.

It would be nice to hear how Canadian upper level staff really feel about eBay's approach to Canada.

Things like the GSP, shipping cost and shipping time ratings, and that kind of thing.

Not that it much matters, but one has to wonder what's really going on in their minds.

[femmefan1946]

Within a year, Mr. Debow helped connect her to eBay.ca, even though she had no tech background and no interest in joining the company.

Helps to have friends.

Ms. Stairs also had a opinion piece in the G&M earlier this year.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-commentary/more-and-more-shoppers-are-online-s...

Talks a lot about mobile shopping.

[pierrelebel]

"Canadian retailers have a long way to go to be competitive online. The good news is that there are solutions available, but online investment must be prioritized to remain competitive. Leveraging marketplaces is a good first step into e-commerce, but further work needs to be done to be relevant to customers in a global economy."

[momcqueen]

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@sylviebee wrote:

Oops .........  I'd like to take that back.   When I search for my own items and select for items closest to me, I don't even show up in the search and I should be first.

That's odd and very unexpected.

---

I am perplexed by your search results. When I search 'Disney Cars' by 'nearest first', I see nothing BUT my own listings for page after page..... and there are 35.146 listings for Disney Cars on ebay. (I don't have to filter Canada.) But that is me logged in as me which could affect the results. The same can be said for Lego Sealed Minifigures' by 'nearest first' and I see nothing but me despite there being 3,550 listings to choose from. What do you suppose the wild card is with that? 

As to the state of affairs at ebay Canada, I never imagined we were plum with people at the TO hq but I expected a workforce of at least a dozen staff and managers. We are a small segment of the ebay world, I realize, but I do expect that we are largely self-sufficient. We all know Help is outsourced to staff in the Philippines and I wouldn't even be sure those folks are staff; they might be paid on a per-call basis. I often hear some fairly weird stuff happening in the background when I phone in to get my final-value-fees-on-shipping-not-combined-and-then-refunded credited back to my account. 

[tobyshitzu]

I believe its based on postal code with the lsiting.  So if its a lettermail/free/flat rate for shipping the seller doesnt have to put in a postal code and it wont work for "close".  There may be more problems beyond that.  I imagine it extremely rare for anyone to limit their serch by distance