Yesterday in Paris we celebrated 15 years of eBay operation in France, alongside other professional eBay vendors.
We are happy to have been invited to share in the celebration as partners, because of our development of the eBay Marketplace module.
We were hosted at the magnificent Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild for an afternoon of work, followed by a cocktail party.
The eBay Marketplace Module
The eBay Marketplace Module, available for free, allows PrestaShop Merchants to copy their catalog to eBay and manage by synchronization all orders placed on eBay, directly through the PrestaShop back-office. You can find more information about the module here, and complete operational documentation here (currently only in English).
My summary of the day
A key player in general marketplaces in France and the world
eBay’s figures are impressive, I have chosen two:
- Global sales of $82 billion in 2014
- 1 million unique visitors per day in France alone. This makes eBay one of the most visited sites in France !
Today, eBay provides both an open general marketplace, and a platform for secondhand goods. Priority is increasingly given to the Marketplace. eBay insists against adoption of direct sales methods, like those used by Amazon, and will never rival it’s vendors.
France is experiencing a rapid increase of marketplaces. Currently it is the only country by far to know this kind of growth and separation. To the rest of the world, eBay and Amazon are the two key players in the market.
An international sales tool
For you, vendors, eBay is a wonderful tool for selling internationally. More than 50% of pro French vendors export products to four or five continents !
At the Cocktail party, a merchant said of eBay:
We are a niche product. We have a limited catalog of between 50-200 references, and we sell around the world thanks to eBay. Imagine the cost and amount of work that would be required to create a different site per country, the different SEO/SEM campaigns, web-marketing per country, etc… Today our product catalog is listed in English, and is available on all eBay platforms from which our customers can browse and buy.
Easy Deliveries
The most exciting news of the day was when eBay announced they are launching a new delivery platform. This new platform was created for its vendors to benefit from negotiated pricing and a wide range of available carriers. In addition, this platform will be connected with all eBay orders. This feature will create shipping labels, package tracking codes, and update delivery statuses automatically. Follow the news from eBay, the platform will open in a few weeks!