Stores Service Craving For Ebay Sales - Media & Technology

LOS ANGELES (Monday, March 15, 2004) - Rick English sold a tuxedo for $240 through eBay Inc. in November without clicking on its Internet auction site. Instead, he took it to a consignment store near his home in Nashville, Tenn.

The store, named Snappy Auctions, photographed the suit, posted the listing on eBay, sold and shipped it for English, a 59-year-old shopping center developer. "Snappy takes all the brain damage out of it," said English, who doesn't know how to upload digital photos to the Internet or sell items on eBay, the world's largest online auctioneer.

Snappy runs some of the 100 or so stores in the United States that cater to people willing to pay a third party to sell their merchandise on eBay. About 650 more so-called "drop-off" stores are planned this year. While eBay doesn't own or control them, it stands to benefit as sales of technology and sporting goods alone through the stores may reach $10 billion, according to a company estimate.

"We're excited about this," eBay Chief Executive Meg Whitman said at a Goldman Sachs investor conference in Phoenix. "Clearly they are getting an incremental customer that would have never come to eBay on their own."

EBay, which collects fees from sellers who pay to list and conduct business through its online marketplace, got more than 7 cents from each dollar of merchandise sold on its site last year. At that rate, $10 billion in consignment sales would yield $700 million in revenue. EBay's 2003 revenue was $2.17 billion.

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