ebay gets stroppy

ebay has today asked its 14m UK members to petition the European Union to stop manufacturers and wholesalers restricting sales of their products on ebay

They claim that in a recent ebay survey of 450 small British online retailers 49% have said that suppliers would not allow them to sell their goods, or tried to impose retail prices on them

We have mixed opinions about ebay. As a toy wholesaler we would be daft to ignore one of the fastest growing sectors of the retail market, but we also have to protect our other customers

All retailers have charges to pay before they can start making any money. If you have a high street store you have to pay rent, rates, electricity and staff before you can even start to make a profit. If you have an internet shop you have to pay for websites, credit card facilities and advertising to get your shop noticed. In order to have repeat customers they bith must offer a wide and ever changing range of products

If you sell on ebay you have to pay Pay Pal and ebay charges, but there are 2 major differences and they are both centered around the fact that a certain % of people selling on ebay are doing it as a hobby or side line and not the main source of income

1. You do not have to have a wide range of products you can just pick the ones with the highest margin! If a clothes retailers sold just belts and t shirts they wouldn’t get many customers. They have to sell the full range of clothing some of which are higher margin than others and cannot cherry pick
2. You do not have to care about the margin you make as long as it covers the ebay and paypal charges. If its a hobby then it doesn’t matter if you just make 50p on a £20 sale whereas it certainly does matter if its your main business!

Mark Lewis, MD of ebay says that he is trying to “break the grip” large manufacturers have over internet sales.

We are not a large manufacturer, we are a soft toy manufacturer and wholesaler trying to give our retail customers a good product at a fair price. If this means that we have to stop selling our ranges to online retailers who are selling our products at an unrealistic margin then we will do it

for more information please see www.bestyears.co.uk

Will Woolworths Online Unsettle High St Toy shops

Woolworths online has now been launched just 20 weeks after the domain name was bought by Shop Direct which owns Littlewoods among other companies

Given that half the problem in starting an internet shop is getting noticed then it was a smart move to buy up such a high profile brand by  Shop Direct and they have big plans for Woolworths.co.uk

Thay have already said that they want the shop to be profitable within 12 months and that target was given a boost by the fact that over 100,000 people logged on to the site the day the website went live

Woolworths also has thriving twitter and facebook sites with more than 8000 followers from which it gathers feedback on the product offering

The new Woolworths will stock significantly more products than the stores including large items such as paddling pools and swimming pools

So far it looks as if the new Woolworths will be more sophisticated than the old discounting Woolies, and it is targeting Amazon as its major rival rather than high street stores

Its going to be very interesting to see how sales go (especially of the pic’n'mix sweets!) as and when the high st version of Woolworths (Wellworths?) is also launched before Xmas

So far in 2009 high street toy stores have enjoyed a good year without the presence of their biggest competitor and the industry’s largest discounter. Will traditional high st toy shops continue to thrive without the presence of a large discounter on their doorstep? Or will going online just make them harder to compete against?

Best Years are a soft toy wholesaler and we are cautiously optomistic because so far prices seem to be standard but we will wait and see. Either way we won’t be supplying them as we deal only with independent and department stores

see www.bestyears.co.uk