It's easy to get nostalgic about eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY).
Despite the company's booming PayPal business, its flagship auction site has been a bowl of hurt lately. Sure, marketplace revenue rose 13% during this year's freshman quarter, but that came after an 18% decline during the same period a year earlier. In other words, eBay.com is worse off than it was two years ago.
It gets worse. eBay's marketplace revenue is padded by its growing and free ad-supported classifieds sites globally, along with non-organic boosts, including last year's acquisition of South Korea's Gmarket.
In other words, eBay.com retreated during the recessionary downturn. That's a shocking realization. The site should have boomed as folks unloaded wares to raise funds, and flocked to the site to smoke out bargains. Thriftiness certainly didn't go out of style; budget-conscious chains TJX (NYSE: TJX) and Big Lots (NYSE: BIG) consistently grew their comps as storm clouds loomed.
What's wrong with eBay? I'll give you a tip. Come back and check this article in a few days. The comments section below will likely be populated with disgruntled sellers who have tired of the site's policy changes in recent years.
Keep in mind that eBay doesn't have to keep all of its buyers and sellers happy. Managing satisfaction -- and more importantly, dissatisfaction -- is part of the art of running a consumer-facing business.
Netflix and Sirius XM Radio lose millions of accounts every year. The distinction here is that they find a way to add even more gross subscribers than those walking away. At the end of the day, that's what separates a growing company from a fading one.
One can always argue that eBay's model was destined for the woodchipper anyway. Craigslist changed the game with its free online listings. Newspaper classifieds haven't been the same since Craigslist, and the same can be said for eBay.com itself. Why pay, when free sites exist that emphasize local face-to-face commerce? The leveling of the playing field has also made it easier for former eBay sellers to smoke out qualified leads, cheaply, through Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) AdWords program.
It's true that eBay launched cottage industries, but now many of these cottages have learned to subsist without eBay.com.
What do you think it will take for eBay.com to regain its mojo? Is that even possible at this point? Share your thoughts in the comments box below. I'll be back next week to go over some of your suggestions.
