What is Next For eBay?
eBay has recently launched a secure local pickup project. You would think it was a good thing. Unfortunately, you have to wait until the end of the press release to find the punch line.
This feature was first hacked together in 2018. That means it took eBay over 2 years to get it to market, though it’s possible that the timing is related to terms laid out in the split with PayPal. In any event, this announcement isn’t exactly confidence inspiring.
I want to believe eBay will innovate and turn around its problems. However, when the main things the company talks about are payments (i.e. still recovering from the PayPal split, years later) and tests of promoted listings (i.e. extracting more from the same sellers while polluting search listings), I am not convinced they’ll rise above this.
I still haven't heard Jamie lay out a plan for the next generation of eBay. You would think it would have happened by now? Maybe he was observing the CEO 100-day rule before announcing future plans? This was Jon Kuhlmann’s suggestion in response to my initial post on the matter. I’m more a believer in the 30-day rule at this point.
One possibility is that the Board just has different ideas altogether. Now that the other shoe has dropped on Devin Wenig's legacy, it's safe to assume the Board didn't even want a new CEO in order to transform eBay. They seem to want to do just enough to raise the stock price and margins so that it's more attractive to a buyer. Another commenter on my original post, Ashish, suggested perhaps Shopify should buy eBay, though my take is that Shopify needs eBay like they need another hole in the head.
What's next guys?
