Word: marketing
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...City, Mo.--and he says the number of vendors at both has slid 30% in the past 18 months. And eBay is the reason. "It has the potential of absolutely destroying the business," says Spotts. "I've seen several shows around the country that are near shutting down." Flea markets could be the next to suffer. When the National Flea Market Association held its annual meeting in Orlando, Fla., in October, 100 members jammed into a session on the Internet future to hear dire predictions of what the Net would do to their land-based businesses...
...Flea-market aficionados insist that eBay is doing a more abstract kind of damage: it's destroying the pleasures of the offline collectibles world. Al Hoff, author of Thrift Score and collector of "everything but Levolor blinds," says eBay has changed the atmosphere in flea markets and thrift stores. She now comes across entrepreneurs who are trolling the aisles looking for items they can resell for a higher price online. "The code of ethics used to be that you bought things for yourself," she notes. And she objects that eBay's efficiency is making it harder for bargain hunters like...
...reach dramatically. In October, eBay announced a new venture: eBay Great Collections, a new area on the site for antiques and fine collectibles. Along with the acquisition of Butterfield & Butterfield, the world's fourth largest auction house, Great Collections marks a move by eBay into the high-end market. (The average sale on eBay is currently about $40.) eBay has also begun rolling out local eBays, starting with eBay Los Angeles. The idea is to provide a local market for big items like cars and furniture that can't easily be shipped long distances and for location-specific items like...
...drive to go international. It's a big enough priority that Omidyar has returned to his native France to help oversee the effort. eBay has always had a small percentage of overseas users logging into its U.S. site, but now it is aggressively moving into foreign markets. In June it purchased Alando.de--Germany's equivalent of eBay--and folded it into the eBay site. The company also has sites running for the U.K., Canada and Australia. eBay is far ahead in those countries but vulnerable in places where it is less well known--and where one of its rivals could...
...just a push for market share. Omidyar and his colleagues are still driven by the company's original goal of creating a global market where everyone competes on an equal footing. One pet project is an effort to bring a Guatemalan village into the global economy by hooking it up to eBay. Consumers in the developed world could buy local handcrafts at lower prices, and eliminating layers of middlemen would allow villagers to keep more of the purchase price for themselves...