EBay Bids on Luxury Recommerce to Woo Young Shoppers

After spending years in a losing battle with Amazon, eBay is returning to its roots.

In an interview with the Financial Times (FT) Friday (Oct. 21), CEO Jamie Iannone said the company is confident that a rise in demand for second-hand luxury goods — as well as a move back to its origins as a place for used items — will help eBay turn things around.

“We’re leaning into where Gen Z and millennials are,” Iannone said. “There’s a bigger focus on sustainability, and ‘re-commerce’. eBay is really the pioneer … that gives us an opportunity.”

Read more: Luxury Brands Take Second Look at Secondhand Sales

The Financial Times report noted that this shift is happening at the end of a year that has seen eBay’s market value fall from its peak of $53 billion last October to roughly $21 billion this week as the company enjoyed a brief boom during the pandemic.

The past year has seen a number of companies embrace the resale of luxury items, a pattern PYMNTS noted as the year began.

“Luxury brands have historically traded on exclusivity and limited accessibility – that was before secondhand marketplaces gave anyone with an extra $486 the chance to buy a luxury item and snap a picture wearing or holding it on Instagram,” PYMNTS’ Karen Webster wrote in January.

“The smart luxury retailers will set aside their disdain for the democratizing of their luxury brand and use it as an entry point to build the next generation of brand loyalists — on their terms.”

Learn more: What if There was a Way to Unlock Some of Luxury Retail’s Resilience?

Nevertheless, the past few weeks have seen companies like LVMH, Hermes, and Kering report earnings that show wealthier consumers still have a desire for luxury items and the means to pay for them.

“For the moment, we don’t see any sign of slowdown in any of our markets,” Hermes Executive Vice President of Finance Eric du Halgouet said recently while noting the company’s plans raise prices 5% to 10% at a time when most of the retail universe is slashing them to get rid of bloated inventories.