eBay Taps Nordstrom, Mattel Alum Alexis Hoopes To Lead Global Fashion Initiatives
eBay has a new VP Global Head of Fashion as Alexis Hoopes joins the company at a pivotal time with "changing priorities" and increasing consumer to consumer selling focus.
That experience could lead to some interesting cross category collaboration as eBay saw a significant uptick in collectibles and toys driven by the popularity of the Barbie movie in 2023.
Since taking the reins of Global Fashion business in September, she's hit the ground running, traveling to eBay's offices and authentication centers in multiple countries and launching the expansion of eBay's Circular Fashion Fund last month.
The new hire comes at an interesting time for the company, as previous VP Fashion, Charis Marquez, departed in August amid broader business development shift expanding the "high value buyer focus vertical" strategy to include more of the core consumer to consumer (C2C) sales that have historically been the foundation of eBay's success.
That shift began earlier this year with mass layoffs and the departure of Chief Business Strategy Officer, Stefanie Jay and has continued with several key business development departures in recent months, including Global Insights Manager, Lamont Jones, who said his role had been eliminated due to "shifting priorities" at the company.
Liz Morton
The C2C efforts have ramped up quickly in the UK as part of what eBay calls the "fix the fundamental aspect of UK Win back plan", dropping private selling fees across most categories and expecting to bring in buyer fees and managed shipping in early 2025 to "remonetize" that market.
Liz Morton
C2C initiatives were a main topic of interest in last week's Q3 2024 earnings call, with weak Q4 guidance raising questions about pressure from fee-free selling lowering revenue estimates during the all important holiday shopping season.
Liz Morton
As part of the C2C pivot, eBay also put their media contract up for review in April, looking to move from a decentralized market-based model to a more centralized model and indicating the marketing insights they had been receiving for the last 4 years were not moving the needle in the way they had hoped.
Dentsu’s iProspect was chosen in September to handle eBay's global media efforts and a new campaign, titled Things. People . Love, that centers around pre-loved fashion with a C2C appeal was recently launched to a very positive reception.
Liz Morton
Under Marquez's leadership, eBay's marketing for this category focused mostly on high end luxury goods, with media partnerships that often blurred ethical and regulatory linse on paid promotions and sponsored content disclosures.
Liz Morton
While luxury is still clearly on the radar for eBay, the C2C pivot is aimed at a wider variety of pre-loved fashion buyers and sellers, which could mean engaging with more social media influencers and resellers for promotional content in the future in addition to the splashy Vogue or Met Gala partnerships.
Hoopes will also likely be under pressure to show eBay's acquisition of Certilogo can pay off with expanding digital ID and AI authentication of fashion goods, as well as working with the product development teams to improve and roll out new AI-enhanced tools like Shop The Look and Explore for pre-loved fashion discovery.
Liz Morton
eBay had also been working on bring the "imperfects" and pre-loved partner program initiatives that have been successful in the UK to the US, but so far those efforts have been slow to develop.
Most recently, eBay has finally started to expand eBay Live livestream selling to more sellers, adding pre-loved clothing to the mix as they pursue "aggressive GMV targets" and look to make progress against competitors who have beat them to the punch on the live shopping trend.
Liz Morton
On the traditional marketplace front, eBay is also seeing increasing competition from Walmart, particularly in collectibles and fashion with the launch of Walmart Resold allowing 3rd party sellers to list pre-owned items in many categories for the first time - including a partnership with StockX to take market share in Sneakers.
That competition appears to be powered in large part by ex-eBayers who have been recruited to lead Walmart's collectibles and pre-owned efforts.
Liz Morton
And now it appears Walmart may be working the same playbook in Fashion with ex-eBay GM Retail Strategy and Buyer Incentives, Audrey Zwibelman, taking on the Head of Strategic Initiatives Fashion role and shouting out several ex-eBay, now Walmart, colleagues in her announcement on LinkedIn:
Nicole Colombo was eBay GM Trading Cards and Collectibles in 2021, before moving to collectibles marketplace ALT and then winding up as GM Apparel Walmart Marketplace in 2023.
Bobs Means took over the trading cards role at eBay when Colombo left, then moved on to GM Electronics, Toys & Seasonal at Walmart Marketplace in 2023 as well.
And Erica Werner was a category manager in Sneakers, Luxury, Jewelry, and Handbags at eBay before moving to Facebook in 2021 and then joining Walmart as Director of Luxury, Jewelry & Accessories earlier this year.
eBay CEO Jamie Iannone told investors on last week's earnings call they are moving ahead with plans to bring in buyer fees in the UK market, despite some competitors who have gone down that same route still struggling to make it work and even, in some cases, reversing course.
Since making the change to shift fees to buyers, Mercari has laid off ~45% of their US staff (with CEO John Lagerling admitting the change had not resulted in the GMV growth they had hoped) and they have continued to struggle with buyer aversion to paying fees directly and a major cart abandonment problem.
7 months later, Mercari is testing adding the buyer fee back into the item price to show one total amount up front with shipping and tax calculated at checkout - just like it used to be when sellers paid the fees - and surveying sellers about the fee structure and how it has impacted average order values.
Poshmark speed ran their version of the buyer fee experiment, which split the fees between both buyers and sellers, receiving so much pushback from both sides of the marketplace that they reverting back to the old fee structure less than 3 weeks later with CEO Manish Chandra admitting it had negatively impacted sales and apologizing to sellers for the disruption.
Liz Morton
In a subtle effort to address investor concerns about eBay's plans to jump on the fee shifting bandwagon, Iannone very clearly said they have no plans to bring fee-free selling (or presumably buyer fees) to the US any time soon, but are moving full steam ahead in the UK as they believe buyers and sellers in that market are more open to the idea.
But he left out that, in addition to fee-free selling for private consumer sellers, eBay has been forced to turn to offering 0% fee promotions through the end of the year in some categories to business sellers as well, in order to try to quell backlash from the C2C initiatives and keep sellers from defecting to Vinted Pro.
Liz Morton
Meanwhile, eBay also facing increasing competition from Etsy-owned Depop, who did their own fee shakeup earlier this year first in the UK before expanding the US in July.
Liz Morton
Forgoing fees on a larger number of sales is putting increased pressure on eBay's Revenue guidance, as reflected in the difference between the Q4 context that was provided in the Q2 presentation - showing "revenue to grow modestly faster Y/Y than GMV":
Versus Q4 guidance in Q3 showing negative revenue, largely driven by "phased monetization of UK C2C initiative" - that would be the fee-free private selling across most categories, with buyer fees still expected to be introduced in the back half of Q1 2025.
That guidance for Q4 weakness sent the stock price tumbling last week, indicating investors may not be as confident that eBay can pull off the massive C2C strategy pivot and fee changes that are relying heavily on strength in pre-loved fashion categories to drive a flywheel effect, turning more consumer buyers into consumer sellers on the platform.
If you're a clothing seller on eBay, what advice do you have for new VP Fashion Alexis Hoopes and what initiatives would you like to see her tackle in 2025? Let us know in the comments below!
