Question
From this article at Auctionbytes this week!
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>eBay Changes to Vintage Clothing Category Has Users Feeling Frustrated
By Ina Steiner
AuctionBytes.com
Chalk it up to miscommunication in a classic case of eBay category chaos.
When eBay told clothing buyers and sellers in July it was changing the vintage clothing category structure, the response was positive. But when the changes rolled out in late August, users were begging eBay to change things back to the way they were.
On July 8, 2003, Maeve*ebay.com posted a message in the Vintage Clothing & Accessory discussion board. Maeve explained that eBay would be making several enhancements in the Vintage clothing, shoes & accessories categories based on feedback from the community. "Please see the changes below. Your feedback is welcomed," Maeve wrote.
But it seems users did not grasp the way the eBay planned to implement the changes. When August 27 rolled around, however, it became painfully clear. And it all comes down to how shoppers browse for vintage clothing. Does a typical shopper of vintage clothing look for the type of clothing (shirts, for example), then by era (1950s), or would a shopper prefer to browse 1950s items and dip in and out of type of clothing?
The consensus of the fashion divas on the Vintage clothing board is that people shop by era over type of clothing. Don't make a classic 1950s Grace-Kelly shopper wade through tie-dye Tshirts.
"Things were much better when they were organized by period, then by item," one user wrote. "The point of vintage is more about PERIOD OF TIME than by type of item! If I love 30s clothing, I don't want to have to look through thousands of 70s and 80s items to find them! Or have to click on each item type and then go in to the time period!"
eBay posted an announcement on August 29, concluding a community discussion was in order. The invitation defended the category changes, reporting that "The majority of new buyers shopping for clothing, shoes & accessories on eBay are very interested in vintage goods, but they are not familiar with shopping by time period."
Users will convene online September 4 to put forth their case and learn what eBay is willing to do to satisfy their needs.
]http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jsp?forum=92&thread=2298547&modifed=2003083 1183124<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Ebays take:"The majority of new buyers shopping for clothing, shoes & accessories on eBay are very interested in vintage goods, but they are not familiar with shopping by time period."
Sellers take:"The consensus of the fashion divas on the Vintage clothing board is that people shop by era over type of clothing. Don't make a classic 1950s Grace-Kelly shopper wade through tie-dye Tshirts."
Who is more in touch with the market and the direction that this market is heading?
Are the majority of new buyers shopping for clothing et.al really interested in old items?
Do the majority of buyers prefer to shop for a type of item before considering what style/period that they will go for, or do they prefer the look of an era (when shopping for vintage items)?
Who is really included in "feedback from the community" when these decisions are made? Is the community based around the needs of new buyers, all buyers or both buyers and sellers?
Kevin
Answer
"The majority of new buyers shopping for clothing, shoes & accessories on eBay are very interested in vintage goods, but they are not familiar with shopping by time period."
Says who, the pimple faced 20 somethings at eBay Inc?
Gimme a break, these maroons are slowly destroying eBay.
Answer
I've never bought or sold clothes on ebay, but it's a no-brainer to categorize Vintage items by era. If you're looking for an 1890 homespun dress, you don't want to look through 1940s house dresses. That's ebay for ya though ...stupid, absolutely no common sense!
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> The consensus of the fashion divas on the Vintage clothing board is that people shop by era over type of clothing. Don't make a classic 1950s Grace-Kelly shopper wade through tie-dye Tshirts.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Karen
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Toy stove collector extraordinaire...
"By the old wooden stove where our hats were hung,
Our words were told, our songs were sung..." ~ Bob Dylan
Answer
This is just another example of how the "online-catalogzation"[/b] of eBay is screwing up the things that already WORK like they should! http://community.here.com/infopop/em...n_rolleyes.gif
If they would QUIT trying to provide an instant gratification online order store....especially with items that are most likely to be auction style categories.....they might see some activity upswing again.
The further and further they take the site away from it's roots, more and more cracks will start to weaken it! WHY CAN'T THEY SEE THAT!??! http://community.here.com/infopop/em...n_confused.gif
<---Ken....who has been successfully packratting for over 4 decades now!
Check HERE for things dragged down from the attic to sell THIS week!
Answer
Being a clothing seller, if what they did to the vintage clothing catagories in any way reflects how they ruined the clothing catagories....they should be flogged (and that's the mildest of my sentiments) http://community.here.com/infopop/em...on_biggrin.gif They took a reasonably workable structure that needed a few enhancements and replaced it an entirely unworkable structure. The clothing & accessories people are lining up behind the vintage clothing people to be heard, hopefully, something will be fixed.
Oh, and if I were to be shopping vintage... I would definitely shop by era first. And with regular clothing... I would be shopping career or casual first... and decide if I wanted a shirtdress or slipdress once I saw that perfect dress... but I don't know which I want before I look at the stupid things.....
Finer Fashions on Ebay, top designers, latest styles. Visit our Boutique
Answer
Sounds to me like the key phrase is "most NEW shoppers..."
Yeah--because eBay's aggresive marketing campaign is targeting a bunch of people who don't know what they're looking at and who probably just bought a "get rich quick on eBay" book...
I would be listening to the OLD shoppers. http://community.here.com/infopop/em.../icon_wink.gif
Dark Elf Collectibles - http://www.darkelfcollection.com
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Answer
I didn't realise ebay had changed the vintage clothing categories. No wonder the vintage slips I listed only got ONE HIT APIECE when they would normally have 50-100. I just figured my counters were bad http://community.here.com/infopop/em...icon_frown.gif
Mel-
Answer
In the Could eBay Split The Site... thread, the conversation turned to Item Specifics and Kathleen said:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>No categories? I don't use them anyways. I search via title or "keywords" within the listings themseves.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Meanwhile Mels has just said above:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>I didn't realise ebay had changed the vintage clothing categories. wonder the vintage slips I listed only got ONE HIT APIECE when they would normally have 50-100. I just figured my counters were bad <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
For the sake of discussion, let's assume that Mel's counter are somewhat proportionally working.
Herein lies the complexity of the Ebay marketplace. The only bell and whistle that I use is double category, and I am convinced that it works (e.g.Political pinbacks get different bidders and prices when listed under pinbacks or political categroies), while there are some items that I could list absolutely anywhere irrelevant, and they would likely get about the same number of hits because they are searched for (e.g. Bonzo, a cartoon dog from the 1920's). Whilst I also almost exclusively use search to find what I will bid on, I know that there are people who fully utilise the category "tools".
Ebay is a complex system, it is a market that was created with a very good intuition, and different users have different skills for finding the items that they want.
Ebay appears to have decided that the market place is too complex and is steadily attempting to "dumb it down" to the absolute lowest common denominator. By doing so, as with the case of Mel's vintage slips, they are undermining the existing market seriously. They did similar things when they changed the Sports Memorabilia categories to something called "Fan Shop" and had an immediate adverse effect on antique sporting memorabilia, I assume because people don't think that "Fan Shop" will contain the antique items they were previously buying from the memorabilia categories. (As a side note, most of my sporting memorabilia now sells to Australian buyers, but the categories on the Australian site still use the term Sports Memorabilia and do NOT use the term Fan Shop. However the default on Ebay Australia is to show items within Australia AND most of the category numbers do not overlap, so this will not benefit most of the people reading this).
My personal opinion is that Ebay would have done more good for the Vintage Clothing industry, instead of altering the category set up to inexperienced buyers and ignoring the needs of experienced buyers and sellers, if they had set up a page showing the differences between clothing styles and educate the buyers what the eras are and where to look for what appeals to them. Instead they have seriously interfered with an established market place in order to placate buyers who are inexperienced.
Item specifics also does not cut it as a replacement to categories (I trust Marie more than to hope that this proposal is just an urban myth). At the same time item specifics may help the inexperienced person who wishes to pull up shirts and *then* determine which era they are looking for, so as an alternative tool, it may stop changes to categories undermining complete sections of the market.
I have listed, in the past, rare names in Australian pottery, on the Australian site under the Australian pottery category. If I were to rely solely on search, these pieces are unlikely to be found because they would pull up irrelevant items or because people would get so few hits that they would rarely search for them anyway. If I were to rely on item specifics, I am then relying on people to use the terms "other", and if they search for a different "shape" of item to what I am listing, they still do not find the product that would suit their collection once they have found it. In this aspect, IF item specifics replaces the category system, the rarest of items, the most uncommon maker names and the rarer variations on shape or style, will simply not be found on Ebay by *most* of the bidders that would buy these items for their collections. Given that Ebay gets major promotional value out of a beer can making the world record price, this too will be detrimental to Ebay's bottom line.
Ebay can not afford to just embrace the lowest common denominator. They must embrace all aspects of this market place for it to remain a relaible source of income for sellers, and by default to continue to hold appeal to buyers. It is, and should be, a very complex marketplace - the range of tools can be manipulated in any variety of ways to find goods to suit most buyers, but the traditional markets need to be nurtured and promoted, not altered to suit the most inexperienced of buyers and undermine the useage of the people who are using those markets efficiently.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>The majority of new buyers shopping for clothing, shoes & accessories on eBay are very interested in vintage goods,<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Is this statement based on fact or spin?
If the majority of people coming to Ebay for clothing are looking for (or just very interested in) old items, then it undermines their reasoning for putting the bidding button at the top of the auction page. The stated reason was "As you know, virtually all e-commerce sites have the buy button up top, and buyers -- especially new ones -- have come to expect that option."
Now, either the majority new buyers are coming to Ebay from e-commerce retail sites where they expect the "buy now" button at the top of the page because they have no reason to read the description when they are used to buying brand new flawless merchandise on-line or they are coming to Ebay because they are interested in vintage merchandise that is not available to them either on the e-commerce sites or in their local area. In any case the placement of a bid/buy button at the top of the auction page does nothing to encourage buyers to actually "inspect" the items they are bidding on.
Every argument now for an unpopular decision on Ebay is now "justified" by using the example of the "new buyer". There is no effort to encourage the new buyer to understand the Ebay marketplace, just a requirement that established sellers and buyers must adjust how they do business to cater for the inexperience of the "new buyer". The market suffers, prices drop and the viability of sellers (who actually pay Ebay's fees) are marginalised and undermined beyond viability to placate the alleged needs of new buyers.
Meanwhile I can't help but feel, in the context of Ebay spin doctoring, that the "new-buyer" is as much of a myth as the modern day Ebay "community".
Ebay need to understand how much effect every ill-conceived adjustment that they make to a sound market place is having.
Kevin
Answer
I'm not sure what the current stats are, but in 2000 I was told by the collectibles catagory manager that 35% of the buyers on eBay shopped by browsing, the rest via Search. That same number was posted in 1998, on AW, by Michael Wilson, who at that time was the head scientist (or some such thing?) for eBay.