The eBay Revolution

by Alex J Allen

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On the increasingly rare occasions that I find myself on the slightly run down two carriage train, fitted with equally dated seating and an unmistakable musky odour back to my home city of Cambridge, I can't help but notice how much it has changed since only ten years ago. The city centre has become awash with expensive designer boutiques, an Apple store displaying shiny white iMacs and iPods and a whole variety of gourmet eateries. It is a product of the booming economy of the last decade, a product of the increasingly afluent middle class with their unprecedented disposable income burning holes in their pockets. There is a a conpicous abscence of bespoke shops. Anything slightly odd, slightly unusual, slightly specialised has no place in the city centre. Leases for the best locations have risen tremendously, and that in turn places pressure on stores to sell. If the market for what you're trying to sell isn't there, then there is no money to make, you're dead in the water. The result? Smaller stores have been pushed to the city outskirts, where through traffic is non existant and the only customers are people who know what they are looking for. The city centre becomes reserved for gargantuan stores who pedal their goods to the lowest common denomenator, there's a Starbucks on every corner, three Gap stores in the same city. Of course, in between these extremes of stores offering mass produced clothing and a shop selling antique ceramic tiles, lie a plethora of shops which lie somewhere inbetween necessity and frivolity. Second hand books, bespoke jewellry, musical instruments and DIY appliances. They are not specialist, they are useful, necessary items that are now often absent in in city centres. The evolution, has been replacing stores that people need, with aspirational brands that they aspire to need. Where once, people would have bought kitchen pans in Woolworths, they now aspire to own the shiny, frivolous kitchen appliances in Lakeland.

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eBay has given back the initiative to small businesses. Of course, the idea of buying and selling isn't even really an idea at all, but the rejuvination of it has completely changed the retail landscape. It isn't as if people have stopped playing instruments, renovating their houses or looking for books to read. But their number no longer justifies the cost of owning a shop, which owes little to people's lessening interesting in these products per se, and far more to the spiralling cost of shop leasing in general. So shops selling musical instruments close their doors, move their goods in to storage, and sell on eBay instead. eBay eliminates start up costs, particularly the need for a premise to operate out of, you can use your own home. The only necessary costs are those paid to eBay for providing the platform to sell. Suddenly, anyone can form a business. Not only are costs reduced, but there is instantly a far greater market than any shop could appeal to in any one city. How many people in Cambridge are interesting in buying antique teapots? Ten? Five? How many are interested in buying them in the whole country? the whole of Europe? The whole world? Considerably more, of course. But it isn't just these specialised businesses that have benefitted, musical instruments sell extremely well on eBay, they add more choice, and they don't depreciate in value particularly. I recently bought a distortion pedal, didn't like it, and sold it for the same price I paid for it. In short, conventional items that don't shift enough units to justify shop space, flourish on eBay where maintenance costs are minimal and their audience is greatly expanded. Perhaps the best thing, certainly from an eco friendly perspective, is that eBay is combating the 21st century world's throw away culture. We're recycling things we aren't using, when previously we thought they were worthless. Dumping old consumer goods in landfill sites is stupid and shortsighted for so many reasons. eBay is salvaging cabin beds that kids have grown out of, desk lamps, tables, chairs, three piece suits and all manner of other items that used to be classified as junk. As our decade of overborrowing, and buying in to the luxurious lifestyles we feel we are entitled to on credit and overdraft comes to an end, the influx of self indulgent luxury shops selling scented candles, breadmakers, water proof shower radios and all manor of other unecessary commodities will cease to attract shoppers in the way it has done since the late 1990's. There will less products to buy, and less money to buy them with. Anything frivilous, anything that is of little practical use, anything that cannot be legitimated as being functional and having genuine purpose will be left on the shelves. eBay's ability to recycle products will become more and more of a necessity, and that can only be good news for the planet as a whole.