eBay partners with Optoro - Why?

eBay and Optoro announced a new partnership. I wish I could say I was excited about it. For eBay, there is almost no downside, but the upside is also extremely limited.

This is one of those $1B ideas that only works on a spreadsheet - each party is only looking at their part, and not the entire supply chain.

eBay will make a % of sales. Optoro will sell software - great so far. But that is about 20% of the entire value chain. Who receives inventory? Puts it away? Describes each item? Holding costs, pick/pack 3 months later when it sells? Whoever is buying the inventory has to do the expensive work.

First, inventory is not the problem in this day and age. Distressed inventory is abundant and worth zero. And with this program, that inventory needs to move around to a new seller from Optoro's facility. Adding more cost to the value chain.

Second, these solutions already exist, and at best this is a mild way to make the arbitrage that could already be happening (from Blinq and Bulq) more efficient. It's not happening now, because there is not enough money to be made there, not because the software is not good enough.

If eBay had its own fulfillment centers and supply chain partners, this would be a completely different equation. Instead, ebay has punted (yet again) on fulfillment after spending millions of dollars (again) analyzing the problem to death. Only to discover what they already know - they don't want to even consider holding any inventory, even through partners.

The big question I have for you is this: is eBay inventory-constrained? Or is it customer experience constrained?

I say it's the latter.