eBay announced today that they are buying Aftebuy, a German auction management company. It has been interesting to watch over the last few years what companies eBay has merged with, purchased, or taken over. One comes to mind, Skype, that really didn’t seem to take hold, but did cost a bundle, something like $2.6 BILLION if I remember right.
Afterbuy is another area of business that I don’t think eBay has ventured into yet. Auction management. There has been news in that area recently (see my previous post Channel Advisor to Acquire Marketworks) when one of the two largest U.S. companies bought the other, making Channel Advisor the auction management company to integrate with eBay. So why is eBay now buying an auction management company? Perhaps the same reason Google bought YouTube, who knows, but I am sure the Channel Advisor users would like to know.
Afterbuy is an all-in-one online sales tool and covers all processes of the selling workflow: goods and inventory management, item listing, cross-selling and transaction and pre-sale management. Afterbuy can be connected to external services and business processes such as accounting software or shipping solutions of logistic services.
Our company sold on ebay exclusively for almost 5 years. We were Powersellers and PESA members and bought in to just about everything eBay, but when eBay bought Skype we were given every opportunity to join and just didn’t see the use or need to. If eBay brings Afterbuy into the U.S. marketplace I wonder how many would want to jump ship from Channel Advisor and move to an eBay platform, unless maybe eBay buys Channel Advisor too!
German Announcement
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