Why Ebay Offers the Ideal Platform to Davids Against Goliaths of the business

Imagine two Shops next to each other selling the same categories of items. One is a swanky air conditioned shop with shining tiles, a lovely lady at the reception and big and spacious full of items of all sizes and shapes of every brand and types. The other one is small no frills shop with very limited quantity and much lesser variety. May be a pot bellied ugly looking ageing man at the counter which perhaps have not been dusted for a while since there is no one else in the shop but this man.

Now imagine that the item that you want is available in both the shops and you are aware of this fact as well. Still which shop you are likely to enter and eventually buy from? The answer is obvious. That is what the likes of Next Chain of White Goods, Hypermarket, Big Bazaar, Total Malls and other such chains of large white goods shops are doing to the much smaller shops next door. You also must not have been surprised to hear the smaller shops shutting down by the dozens due to falling sales and even faster falling morale of those running such shops and businesses. This is a typical Brick and Mortar Business World.

Now come to the Amazing world of Online Shopping. And particularly the likes of Ebay.in which are basically the Online Managed Marketplace. The beauty of the Virtual World and Market place is that it does not distinguish between the Swanky and the dilapidated as long as the goods that they are selling are conforming to certain standards. Now that is not very difficult to do since both these types of shops more or less source from same to similar places and at same to almost similar prices. Now here the Selling game gets reversed. The swanky one has some fixed costs which he cannot do much about and in order to survive he has to build these costs into the price of the item. Compare that to the other one where perhaps the same man is the owner, packer, delivery boy and the cleaner. He perhaps keeps his fans and lights off to save on that extra penny and has virtually nil costs compared to the bigger ones. So who will be able to sell the same goods cheaper? Platforms like Ebay ensure that the sellers maintain certain minimum standards or else they are weeded out. Hence the ones left are invariably the ones who have never or rarely failed to keep up the promises.

Let us accept one thing. Be it poor or rich. We Indians love bargains and low prices. Its in our blood perhaps. We are not even discussing quality and service as it can safely be considered of acceptable quality for all sellers on ebay. So you will flourish?

Why am I telling this story? Well because I am actually experiencing this amazing story in real time in real life in the real world of ebay selling. Check out my ebay shop seller id Gizmobhai. I guess some of you might have even purchased from us at some point of time or other if you are regular on ebay for IT products. We have more than 5900 feedbacks built over last three years and would perhaps be amongst the top 10-15 sellers on ebay India. And we are essentially a Mom-n-Pop Store, well in this case a Husband-n- wife store running the business from the confines of our small place. Though all the paperworks are in place as it is essential to do and grow business without, but this story essentially is about a very important lesson which I saw Late Dhirubhai Ambani repeating often.

“ Keep Costs Low, Profits and Business will Always Be there”

We are a big fan of him and couldn’t resist naming our ebay shop as “gizmobhai” nor opening a website by the same name, www.gizmobhai.com

Well I must admit we have had our share of ups and downs, with the downs being so severe that we were almost but wiped out. But we clung on and Thank God we clung on!! We surely write about it, but would be a long story. Will cover in parts J

I love writing about online shopping and particularly about my experiences and the opportunities that are available on Ebay India. Read more about them from the following link.

https://www.gizmobhai.com/tag/ebay/

And yes Ebay is not paying me for writing this. It’s just a way of showing gratitude to someone because of whom five of us including myself have been able to find a decent steady source of living