Cashing In on eBay Boom

O R L A N D O, Fla., June 29, 2003 -- In the world that is eBay, Adam Ginsberg is what they refer to as a "power seller." In the language that most people speak, he's simply a very successful man.

The 36-year-old entrepreneur from sunny California began selling pool tables on the popular Internet auction site less than two years ago, and he already has three warehouses, a handful of employees, and a shiny new Jaguar convertible.

Every month, he sells close to 600 pool tables and earns hundreds of thousands of dollars. If the economy is sluggish, he surely isn't feeling it.

"The average retail store," he says, "sells about 250 tables a year. We sell that about every two weeks."

Thus marks a new day for eBay.

What began five years ago as an online garage sale has been transformed into a marketplace for a staggering amount of business. Last year, the Web site took in more than $1 billion.

The secret is in the subscriber. There are 69 million of them, and they're so turned on by a good deal that their frequent visits to the site border on addiction.

It has transformed the Web site. IBM now sells computers on eBay. UPS is offering its services to sellers and buyers — even the Small Business Administration is at the "eBay Live!" convention in Orlando this weekend, teaching would-be entrepreneurs how to set up shop.

The company's CEO, Meg Whitman, might as well be a rock star. She is ushered around the convention center with a gaggle of handlers and has little choice but to sign autographs anywhere she goes.

"This is just the beginning," she says.

Losing Its Everyday Appeal?

But all this growth concerns some of the rank-and-file subscribers who helped make eBay what it is today. The fear is that the site has grown so commercial, it is losing its appeal as an everyday marketplace for Americana. The big boys, some argue, are going to ruin everything.

"It used to be, like if you put up an item, there'd only be four or five other similar items on the whole thing," says one of eBay's sellers, speaking from the floor of this weekend's convention. "Now you put up an item, there may be a 150 more."

Michael and Maggie Bonko, a couple from Orlando, aren't terribly worried. Last year, they both lost their jobs with a computer printer manufacturer. Now they make their living auctioning off movie memorabilia. They believe there is unlimited room for sellers and buyers of all types.

"There's no way we could have afforded to open up a business on a street corner somewhere," says Michael Bonko, "especially after being unemployed."

Maggie Bonko says she and her husband are no longer in any rush to look for work. "We spend lots of time together," she says. "We work together. [And we] got to keep our home."

Success Stories Abound

There are so many of other success stories, of varying peculiarity, it's dizzying. There's the couple from Griffin, Ga., who were able to outfit an entire ice cream parlor with items they purchased on eBay. The retired circus ringmaster whose first sale was a dead beetle from his front yard but now sells antiques to supplement his Social Security.

"I don't know a thing about a computer, never, nothing," says Al Dawley, the retired ringmaster. "But I know how to sell on eBay!"

The people of eBay strongly believe they are the new e-commerce revolution that was promised years ago, and this weekend in Orlando is their big party, where the more is surely the merrier.