This was exactly what I was thinking too. In a weird way, eBay is competing with itself. There have always been companies where you can drop/ship your stuff off at and have them list it for you.
But, I think that most people do not want to buy a counterfeit on eBay. Ioffer provides much lower prices on fakes, oftentimes direct from China. For instance, on eBay, the average fake Chanel le boy still sells for over $1500, and a Celine mini luggage will sell for around $1400. There is no way that people are paying this kind of money knowingly for a counterfeit.
There are very few counterfeits that are 99.9% accurate. Most of the time I can spot a fake dress or bag on someone from <5 feet away. But, then again, I'm very familiar in this space.
Any proof to support the claim " I'm sure there is a small market for this."? I think there is a huge market for fake stuff in the US. Some people buy it intentionally, some dont. If you are paying $100 for an LV bag, its probably a fake or heavily used.
"Most of the time I can spot a fake dress or bag on someone from <5 feet away."
I'd be worried about survivorship bias. Perhaps you only "see" a sub-set of fakes (the un-convincing ones) and the good ones walk right on by. Isn't this problematic?
That's why companies use convertible notes. While the cap is a proxy for valuation, there is no issued stock options until the note converts to equity in a priced round.
Appreciate the thoughts. If you want a knock off; it's your own business. However, most sellers are advertising their items as authentic when they aren't. This results in someone purchasing an item for hundreds if not thousands of dollars for something that they did not expect. Our site caters to those who want the real deal. :)
Some people appreciate the beauty and quality of designer items. For instance, I personally find Herve Leger to fit me better than any other brand of dress. The items hold their value and beauty so well, that you can oftentimes sell them for a profit (Chanel is a great example of this).
:) Yep. We read this too, and we loved this comment:
Steven Cox 22 hours ago-
The amount of margin a company can extract from the marketplace depends on a couple factors: (1) Amount of competition within the category, (2) the amount of value the company is providing that market participants are willing to pay for (example: a listing site vs. a listing site plus scheduling and billing tools), (3) the virality of the business (lower CAC = ability to charge lower fees), and (4) the presence of a recurring revenue stream (allows for lower margin per transaction).
No matter what margin the business decides on, the strategic decision each company must ask is how much adoption is needed today vs. the expeted margin. The higher the growth needed, the lower the fees need to be.
Once, I heard an early eBay Executive explain how eBay's initial low fees allowed them to run away from other early auction sites. They were priced low enough to where no one could undercut them and priced where the market contributors deemed the fees reasonable. The other sites had two options: charge less and go out of business or charge more per transaction to get the same revenue output - which caused the market contributors to seek out a lower cost solution (eBay). Game over.
Part art, part science... and a tank load of work.
I definitely agree it's part art and part science.
"The higher the growth needed, the lower the fees need to be."
I don't think that's strictly true. If you had two companies and one had three times the margin of the other, this gives them three times the revenue of the other to acquire and service new customers.
Without the margin you need to go the massive VC route, which is what eBay pursued. Depends on how you want to build the business I guess.
Not all eBay cases have the same outcome. There are even online sites dedicated to putting together counterfeit claim documents for Chanel, Hermes, etc for eBay. They usually charge around $100 for a document.
