Either you've been sleeping, or you are joshing me.
Do your homework and look at the numbers!
eBay has grown by more than 60 percent in the last 3 months alone! So you can throw your GDP growth, and income growth and retail growth OUT the window.
Yes, eBay is taking it away from lots of others. Look at newspaper classifieds. They will be destroyed by eBay. And don't think for one minute that CompUSA or Egghead or MicroWarehouse or Ingram Micro, for that matter, aren't beginning to be hurt by eBay. Won't be long before Century 21, used car dealers, and many others are hurt by eBay.
eBay is taking the place of garage sales, yard sales, local classifieds, flea marts, antique shops... The list goes on and the list is going to get MUCH bigger.
And as far online competition: it already exists, and nobody is touching eBay.
And you want to know what?
Nobody is going to touch eBay. eBay has online auctions sewn up. Game is over. Yahoo has tried. Auction Universe has tried. Hundreds of others have tried.
Buyers go where the merchandise is, and sellers go where the buyers are. Online, there is only one place, and that place is eBay.
You know, maybe I was too conservative with my numbers. $380B in gross merchandise sales really isn't all that much, especially when you consider international potential, when you consider that people will sell their houses, their cars, boats, collectibles, garments, computers, etc. |
