Trendsurfing: Ebay drop-shops (The Times)
By David Rowan
You're nobody in Hollywood if you have time to use eBay. That's why Amy Weintraub is building a local retail chain that will do everything for you. Walk into her Beverly Boulevard store, between La Brea and Fairfax, and the 48-year-old former video producer will photograph your unwanted goods, list them on the auction site, answer any e-mailed questions, and then pack and mail them off to the highest bidder. Then all you need do is wait for your cheque - without ever having to touch a computer.
Today has been typically frantic, with 30 items ready for listing by 5pm. "I've got in five collectable Barbies today, some mink, and a really cool 1940s rotating barber's pole that will fetch around $300," Weintraub explains busily between customers. "The hard part is having to turn down two out of every five items as you know they won't sell. People round here take it very personally - so we try to do it gently, making it very clear it's the item we're rejecting, not the person."
Drive around Los Angeles these days, and you can't miss this new retail phenomenon. From Santa Monica to Pasadena, bricks-and-mortar stores devoted to selling other people's stuff on eBay are opening quicker than you can place an online bid. These eBay "drop shops", with names such as AuctionWagon and AuctionDrop, want a slice of an online marketplace which sold an extraordinary $24 billion of goods last year. Those sorts of numbers mean that Amy Weintraub - who bought the LA franchise rights from a chain called iSold It - is not bothered by the competition. By charging sellers 30 per cent commission, she believes, she can take her current two stores profitably up to 20.
"LA is quite a service town," Weintraub explains. "Why do people employ maids and not clean their houses themselves? We're getting busy people who will pay for that service. And our reputation as a power-seller means they can feel good about doing business through us."
These drop-shops have now started arriving in Britain. SellStuffEasy, based in Dalston, East London, recently sold a £7,000 fitted kitchen, and has since been offering a Liebherr fridge freezer and a Miele dishwasher (both seeking offers over 99p when we last checked). More ambitiously, Auctioning4U, which opened its first shop last January in Hammersmith, West London, was this week due to open its third, in Kew Gardens. "We've got one coming in North London by the end of the year, and we plan to open one a month after that," explains Christian Braun, 36, the venture capitalist behind the chain. "This business doesn't work unless you have 30 or 40 stores."
Braun's conviction that there is a market stems from personal experience. "My wife and I cleared our house, and offered around 200 items on eBay, everything from an Enya CD to an African mask," he says. "It was very painful - you have to reply to e-mails all day, count the pieces in your jigsaw puzzles, then wrap everything. We worked out that it took two-and-a-half hours per item. If you don't value your time, that's fine."
Auctioning4U's selling point, he says, is his team's specialist knowledge that has brought in £330 for a Vivienne Westwood jacket and £1,400 for a 1938 bottle of whisky. Still, the 33 per cent commission seems steep. Doesn't that limit the business's appeal? "Absolutely not," Braun insists. "People come to us because they're time poor or don't have a PC. Or maybe they don't want the world to know that they're selling."
Does somebody want to tell Cherie Booth?
(The Times, London, November 15 2004)
You're nobody in Hollywood if you have time to use eBay. That's why Amy Weintraub is building a local retail chain that will do everything for you. Walk into her Beverly Boulevard store, between La Brea and Fairfax, and the 48-year-old former video producer will photograph your unwanted goods, list them on the auction site, answer any e-mailed questions, and then pack and mail them off to the highest bidder. Then all you need do is wait for your cheque - without ever having to touch a computer.
Today has been typically frantic, with 30 items ready for listing by 5pm. "I've got in five collectable Barbies today, some mink, and a really cool 1940s rotating barber's pole that will fetch around $300," Weintraub explains busily between customers. "The hard part is having to turn down two out of every five items as you know they won't sell. People round here take it very personally - so we try to do it gently, making it very clear it's the item we're rejecting, not the person."
Drive around Los Angeles these days, and you can't miss this new retail phenomenon. From Santa Monica to Pasadena, bricks-and-mortar stores devoted to selling other people's stuff on eBay are opening quicker than you can place an online bid. These eBay "drop shops", with names such as AuctionWagon and AuctionDrop, want a slice of an online marketplace which sold an extraordinary $24 billion of goods last year. Those sorts of numbers mean that Amy Weintraub - who bought the LA franchise rights from a chain called iSold It - is not bothered by the competition. By charging sellers 30 per cent commission, she believes, she can take her current two stores profitably up to 20.
"LA is quite a service town," Weintraub explains. "Why do people employ maids and not clean their houses themselves? We're getting busy people who will pay for that service. And our reputation as a power-seller means they can feel good about doing business through us."
These drop-shops have now started arriving in Britain. SellStuffEasy, based in Dalston, East London, recently sold a £7,000 fitted kitchen, and has since been offering a Liebherr fridge freezer and a Miele dishwasher (both seeking offers over 99p when we last checked). More ambitiously, Auctioning4U, which opened its first shop last January in Hammersmith, West London, was this week due to open its third, in Kew Gardens. "We've got one coming in North London by the end of the year, and we plan to open one a month after that," explains Christian Braun, 36, the venture capitalist behind the chain. "This business doesn't work unless you have 30 or 40 stores."
Braun's conviction that there is a market stems from personal experience. "My wife and I cleared our house, and offered around 200 items on eBay, everything from an Enya CD to an African mask," he says. "It was very painful - you have to reply to e-mails all day, count the pieces in your jigsaw puzzles, then wrap everything. We worked out that it took two-and-a-half hours per item. If you don't value your time, that's fine."
Auctioning4U's selling point, he says, is his team's specialist knowledge that has brought in £330 for a Vivienne Westwood jacket and £1,400 for a 1938 bottle of whisky. Still, the 33 per cent commission seems steep. Doesn't that limit the business's appeal? "Absolutely not," Braun insists. "People come to us because they're time poor or don't have a PC. Or maybe they don't want the world to know that they're selling."
Does somebody want to tell Cherie Booth?
(The Times, London, November 15 2004)
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