The Largest Web Marketplace, Ebay Turns 20
One of the oldest e-commerce market place, Ebay has recently turned 20. Ebay was founded in an era when the world was not favorable to e-commerce websites. Pierre Omidyar, an Iranian computer programmer, brought this idea of a start up in the September of 1995. Ebay was initially established as an auctioning platform in 1995 and was later transformed into this e-commerce platform after two years. Ebay has a rich history attached with it and a brief study of its milestones so far can give an effective insight to new entrepreneurs in the startup business.
Ebay, in its auctioning business, sold its first product in 1995 which was a laser pointer and was sold for a mere amount of $14.83. The first breakthrough for Ebay came in 1997 when it sold soft toys of worth around 500 million dollars. This amounted for over 6 percent of all the sales of Ebay by that time. Ebay primarily started in Germany, Australia and the United Kingdom and within five years, the company had 1 million users. Today, Ebay has its network spread across 180 countries.
Ebay spread like a revolution in the e-commerce industry and by the time 2000 came, Ebay was popular among most of the business houses irrespective of their size and capital. Everyone from a mini business owner to a well-established brand could register with Ebay and this has made Ebay a global brand that catered to the needs of everyone. If you have any concern regarding Ebay you can contact their contact support at 0844 324 0499.
In 2004, Ebay suffered a backdrop when users started complaining about its inefficient payment system as it was not able to handle large amount of traffic on the website. As a solution to this problem, the company acquired the online transaction server PayPal. The acquisition cost Ebay a whopping amount of $1.4 billion and within ten years, the total volume of payment transacted through PayPal exceeded $60 billion. However, today PayPal is a separate company and is no longer covered under the umbrella of Ebay.
During the last five years, Ebay has been facing a stiff competition from other e-commerce ventures. The market share of Ebay in developing markets like India has been reduced to just 10 percent. Even from the investments point of view, young e-commerce platforms are way ahead than old stalwarts like Ebay and Amazon. Interestingly on its 20-year anniversary, Ebay is looking forward to some major changes in its investment and working methodology.
