eBay Rumored Ready To Cut 10% of Workforce

September 14, 2008 · Filed Under Internet Marketing, News, amazon, eBay, ecommerce 

In an article published last week in Barrons Weekly  based on a report from Wedge Partners, Reuters today published a very short article on the rumors. 10% of eBay’s worldwide staffing would peg the number of layoffs at approximately 1500 staffers. eBay has not responded to requests for comment on this report.

With eBay stock reaching a 52 week low of 22.16 which is also a 5 year low, and ending the trading day Friday at 22.55 the company has lost just over 40% of it’s value in the past year.

Analysts are describing seller unrest and poor returns on eBay’s purchase of Skype along with the declining US economy and strengthening of the dollar as possible reasons of this decline.

Seller unrest has risen drastically since January when incoming CEO John Donahoe referred to the seller concerns and complaints to announced site changes as “noise”. eBay has made significant changes to it’s pricing structure including negotiating formerly unheard of reduced or free listing fees and reduced Final Value Fees for large volume sellers, restrictions on payment methods disallowing payments on the site by check, money order or cash, and placing limits on shipping fees sellers can charge in certain categories. Last week eBay announced more changes to the site including changes to the search engine on the site and changes to the Items pages that have sellers scrambling to ensure their listings can be seen by buyers which has increased seller concerns. Sellers cite bugs in the eBay Best Match search engine and concerns that the planned look to the items pages will be glitch ridden and confuse and frustrate buyers.

Sellers Moving to Other Venues

Thousands of posts on blogs and even the eBay Discussion Boards seem to indicate that ecommerce sellers who once believed that eBay was THE place to market are now looking at other venues such as Amazon, Overstock, Bidtopia, eCrater and Etsy and many others. In addition many sellers are ramping up their own websites as marketing venues. Unfortunately especially now as sellers and shoppers get ready for the very busy Q4 shopping season, many of the sites sellers are moving to with the exception of Amazon simply do not have the buying traffic coming to the sites.

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