eBay Loses GM Collectibles & Trading Cards
UPDATE 12-15-21
It looks like Bob Means has stepped in to fill the GM Collectibles & Trading Cards role after Nicole's departure.
Tony Reid
More personnel shakeups are happening at eBay - this time affecting one of the all important "focus verticals" - trading cards.
Nicole Colombo General Manager, Collectibles & Trading Cards will be leaving the company to join card exchange Alt.
Kim Bhasin
Nicole Colombo, who ran EBay’s fast-growing business in collectibles and trading cards for the past two years, is joining card exchange Alt as president. The former fashion-merchandising executive will drive overall business strategy for the platform, whose first asset class is trading cards. Management plans to expand into several other categories.
“Alt’s main goal is to create transparency and liquidity of alternative assets,” Colombo said in an interview. “That can mean trading cards, luxury watches, NFTs. The goal is to go beyond that.”
Nicole recently participated in the September eBay Seller Check In with a special session specifically devoted to Collectibles. This was a "make up session" designed to quell seller discontent after the Collectibles break out session at eBay Open was dedicated almost exclusively to trading cards.
Losing talent to an up and coming competitor zeroing in on some of the same categories as CEO Jamie Iannone's vertical focus playbook has to sting, especially on the back of other recent leadership changes in eBay's International ops.
Liz Morton
Liz Morton
This situation is somewhat reminiscent of when ex-CEO Devin Wenig found himself in the unenviable position of having SVP Americas Scott Cutler leave eBay to become CEO of StockX, taking a chunk of the sneaker resale market with him.
Iannone has spent a great deal of time, money and resources trying to claw back some of that market share with no fees on sneaker sales over $100, Authenticity Guaranteed, and an enormous marketing blitz including events, sponsored content, influencer collaborations and more.
How embarrassing would it be to have history repeat itself - especially with so much riding on the success of these focus verticals?
What the heck is really going on at eBay HQ? Stay tuned for updates as the story unfolds!
much too complicated now for a few pounds a year in sales
They just "killed the golden goose". I imported my 1500+ eBay items to there since it was free. Turned out just to be a lot of work for (maybe) 3 sales a month.
The total fees were higher there before this new $20 a month cost structure, even though they claimed otherwise. When one factors in the 3.49% + 49 cent PayPal processing fees so one can get paid, there went a good chunk of profit.
Now they have boosted their commission to 11%, and still claim that the cost to sell there is less than eBay's. And remember that this does not include payment processing. WHY?? Makes no sense at all.
On eBay, for $27.95 a month, I sell over 100 items there every 30-31 days. Makes ZERO SENSE to pay a site $20 to make just a couple of sales. Since they now allow 50 "free listings", I have trimmed my offerings back to just below that amount. Also had to raise all my prices accordingly to absorb the extra selling costs.
The people who run the show here obviously didn't realize that eBay sellers who imported their listings gave the site a great depth of product, which would attract more buyers. Now that will be gone, because NO ONE will pay them $20 monthly for little to no sales.
The site also has technical issues that they refuse to fix. It was a decent resource to enable the occasional sale, but they will soon be stacked onto the eCommerce trash heap of companies that THOUGHT they could compete with Amazon and eBay. Etsy may also suffer the same fate soon, as many sellers are also leaving their site due to high fees, website issues, and poor management.
Basic eComm rule here: When you do not carry any inventory, and sellers are solely responsible for supplying your site with the goods offered, DON'T BITE THE HAND WHICH FEEDS YOU!!!