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Inventory hasn’t yet emerged as a “must have” for merchants, but the strategic importance of tracking store inventory remains undiminished. Merchants will potentially use inventory levels to drive users to specific locations, build promotions to get rid of overage (or remove promotions when supplies are running low).

While far from universal, many national retailers are beginning to use various inventory services, including eBay’s Milo.com, Gannett’s ShopLocal, Local Corp.’s Krillion, Wishpond , Sale Locator, Retailigence and various other services.

EBay’s purchase of Milo.com in December 2010 as an anchor for its eBay Local unit really caught our attention. We caught up with founder and eBay Local head Jack Abraham this week.

Abraham sees a world where Web product search and physical store visits converge. “You’ll make your decision on the Web to come into the store,” he says. Three key areas being targeted for inventory-based marketing include electronics, home & garden and apparel. Each of these areas not only relate to product sales, but possible service extensions as well, such as for contractors.

The move toward inventory-based marketing, however, is happening slower than Abraham would like. Nevertheless, he cites a growing number of relationships, and remains confident that it will happen, perhaps via media partnerships. A Milo deal with Find n Save, the shopping product from eight major newspaper companies, is a start in this direction.

Meanwhile, Abraham is seeking to leverage eBay’s role as a tech partner for both national and local merchants, comparing eBay favorably to Amazon, with which it has an increased rivalry. “Unlike Amazon, there is someone on their side that wants to help them,” and who “reaches them at the decision point,” says Abraham.

While Amazon Stores has a huge body of merchant customers, it has recently run afoul of some merchants with its price comparisons feature. Indeed, some merchants believe that working with Amazon is a Trojan horse likely to end up driving customers to its own site. EBay doesn’t have warehouses” to sell goods against merchants, notes Abraham.

This Post Has 5 Comments

  1. Anyway,, as far as saving/buying on eBay goes:

    If you see an item that you want listed in auction format, send the seller a message asking if they will accept $x to end the auction early and sell the item to you. May be telling them that they would not have to wait as long to get their money (they would probably know that, but it still might help). If that does not work, use a sniping service such as Bidball.com to bid for you. It’ll bid in the last few seconds, helping you to save money and avoid shill bidding.

    If there is a particular item that you want that is relatively rare on eBay or goes fast when one is listed, use ebuyersedge.com to set up a saved eBay search for it. You’d get an e-mail whenever a match is listed. You can use the price, category, exclude word, etc. filters to narrow down the list of results that you receive in the e-mails. Excellent for “Buy It Now”s priced right.

    If the item that you are looking for is difficult to spell, try a misspelling search site like Typojoe.com to hopefully find some deals with items that have main keywords misspelled in the title. Other interested buyers might never see them. Then, if the item is listed an auction format, after a few days of no bids (hopefully anyway) send the seller and offer to end the auction early and sell the item to you. They may worry that no one is interested, and take whatever they can get.

  2. ShopZooky is working to change how local search works for shoppers and local merchants. It leverages the Facebook network directly with Facebook Offers. ShopZooky, allows merchants to reach their local shopping community via Facebook Offers and other mobile tech such as Apple Passbook. It is all about the social network to make local commerce work for local merchants.

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