Marketplaces

Sellers Baffled as Amazon Ditches Product Ads
August 12, 2015 at 3:59 pm

Merchants who advertise products on Amazon.com got some confusing news on Tuesday. Amazon is discontinuing its Product Ads program, and it's replacing it with a new Text Ads program. But no one seems able to find information about the Text Ads. EcommerceBytes could find nothing about it on Amazon's website, and the company didn't respond…

Retailers Demand Jet.com Remove Links
August 10, 2015 at 2:45 pm

Dozens of the nation’s largest retailers including Macy’s, Amazon.com and Home Depot have quickly moved to disassociate themselves from new discount retail website Jet.com. The retailers complained to Jet after discovering it had placed links to their sites without permission, promising its own members cash back for making purchases after clicking the links. A comparison of Jet’s…

PayPal’s Debut Market Value Tops eBay’s in Hunt for Growth
July 20, 2015 at 2:36 pm

PayPal Holdings Inc. will make its stock debut with a market value almost 1.4 times that of eBay Inc. as investors bet on bigger returns from the digital payments business than its former parent company struggling with slow growth. PayPal starts trading Monday with a market capitalization of about $46.6 billion, data compiled by Bloomberg…

The Path to an eBay Revival
July 15, 2015 at 3:06 pm

As eBay prepares for life without its faster-growing PayPal business, the e-commerce pioneer’s future seems uncertain. Incoming Chief Executive Devin Wenig hopes a return to eBay’s roots will be the path to its revival. Until investors are confident in his plans, however, it will be a drama worth watching after PayPal is officially spun off…

How Amazon Sellers Can Capitalize on Prime Day
July 14, 2015 at 2:44 pm

Amazon.com’s Prime Day is tomorrow, and retailers will need to be prepared for the tidal wave of purchasing activity on Amazon. In honor of the e-commerce behemoth’s 20th birthday, Amazon plans to host a day of crazy sales and giveaways, with sales forecast to be greater than on Black Friday. Third-party Amazon sellers stand to…

Barnes & Noble Leaves Sellers in the Lurch
July 8, 2015 at 3:17 pm

Barnes & Noble relaunched its website in late June, but with one important thing missing: its marketplace. Third-party sellers have been kept in the dark, unable to log in to their selling accounts for over a week. Barnes & Noble Spokesperson Mary Ellen Keating provided EcommerceBytes with the following statement on Tuesday evening: "We recently…

Alibaba Sells 11 Main as Merchants Criticize Lackluster Sales
June 23, 2015 at 2:11 pm

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. will sell its U.S. website 11 Main to rival online marketplace OpenSky, with merchants saying they grew disenchanted with the Chinese company’s first experiment in American e-commerce. Alibaba will hold a stake in the combined entity, according to an emailed statement Tuesday. The boutique website sought to replicate a Main Street…

Target Bans Resellers After Last Month's Lilly Pulitzer Incident
May 21, 2015 at 4:04 pm

A month after facing criticism over its handling of a designer collaboration, Target has apparently handed down a directive regarding resellers. It's the latest retailer to crack down on eBay and Amazon.com sellers who use retail stores to source inventory in what's known as retail arbitrage. On April 19, Target launched "Lilly Pulitzer for Target,"…

A Window of Opportunity for Smaller Online Marketplaces
May 12, 2015 at 5:10 pm

We live in a world where automation, speed to produce and low-cost goods are the norm. When you visit your local big-box retailer, you're guaranteed to find the same items in the same store the next state over. And the majority of the products in those big-box stores are made in China, Indonesia or Thailand.…