EBay Signs Seller-Services Pact
September 13, 2000
By Penelope Patsuris

NEW YORK. 12:25 PM EDT-Most items being auctioned online are sold on eBay's site. But more and more sellers are using aggregator auction sites that offer one-stop shopping, letting them manage listings they have on a variety of sites from one place. Often it is the auction community's "power sellers" that use auction-services sites like AuctionWatch, Bidder's Edge and GoTo. Power sellers are auction merchants who run many auctions on a variety of sites like Amazon.com (nasdaq: AMZN) and Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO), or small, niche-oriented sites – and often earn a living by doing so. It's important for eBay (nasdaq: EBAY) to keep the serious sellers who use these services happy, since they account for most of its sales. The site says just 10% of its merchants bring in 80% of its revenue. That's why eBay today announced an exclusive partnership with a company called Andale (pronounced ahn-da-lay), which will be the seller service provider on the site. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Andale will offer every eBay seller a free "counter tool" that lets them monitor how many visitors an auction is getting.

Then comes the upsell. Andale will also offer fee-based services that help sellers with automated product merchandising, inventory and financial management as well as customer service. Sellers will be charged 3% of their gross sales. "We've seen an increase in the number of Web sites that are trying to become the destination for sellers who list items on more than one auction site," says Gomez Advisors analyst Mark Gambale. "EBay is integrating Andale to help ensure that its power sellers won't have to leave its site to manage their other auctions." Andale launched its services on Amazon and Yahoo! in October, and says it is used by 600,000 merchants that do a total of $1.7 billion in sales annually.