E-commerce giant eBay today made its latest moves to blur the lines between online and offline commerce, and it’s chosen the UK to do it: it launched a new Click and Collect service, where shoppers can buy goods from eBay online and then select a physical retail location in the UK where they can be delivered. This is the first commercial trial of the service, although it has been working on it for about a year already. It will operate on two levels: for large retailers who have physical stores and also sell on eBay, they can now give users the option to pick up goods in those stores instead of having them delivered. For smaller eBay merchants, eBay has struck a deal with the Argos chain of stores for home goods for users to get their ordered goods delivered there.
The Argos deal will cover, at first, 150 UK stores and some 50 eBay merchants, eBay president Devin Wenig said today in a presentation in London (pictured here). The idea is that this will give consumers who do not want to buy certain items with delayed delivery more convenience in getting those goods more instantly.
What’s not clear is whether those merchants are also working with Argos for the actual fulfilment of those orders. (In other words, if you buy a blender with an eBay merchant, does that merchant then ship the blender to Argos, or is it deducted from inventory at that Argos location? We’re reaching out to ask.)
In any case, eBay is pitching it as a game changer for how merchants will be able to offer consumers goods:
“This new way to shop — with different online merchants and collection at convenient locations — could create immense opportunities for sellers,” said Wenig today.
The move is an interesting one both for eBay and for the physical stores with which it will partner.
For eBay it brings the company closer to where most people are still spending the vast majority of their money. For example, stats out from the U.S. Census Bureau in August note that in Q2 of this year $64.8 billion was spent in e-commerce. But total retail sales were $1,126.2 billion. In other words, only 5.75% of retail sales in the U.S., one of the bigger e-commerce markets, are online.
But for brick-and-mortar retailers, the longer-term writing is on the wall. Online continues to grow faster than offline (5% versus 1%, says the USCB), and at a time when many physical retailers are seeing stagnant growth or even declines in sales, it’s important for brick-and-mortar companies to continue embracing avenues like the Internet to connect with users.
This is, by far, not eBay’s first move to connect better with the high street. PayPal’s here mobile payment solution puts eBay right at the point of sale for transactions with smaller merchants. And eBay has also created a touchscreen store window for Kate Spade Saturday to browse items, and check-in and QR Code services to quickly check for and buy items online.
In the U.S. eBay is building out an eBay Now network for same-day deliveries to compete against the likes of Amazon Prime (and now Google). Like eBay Now’s restriction to the U.S. market, for now eBay tells me that Click and Collect remains a UK service only.
I’m speaking directly to Wenig shortly and will update this story with more after that.
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