This holiday season online retail giant eBay will be going analog – making the leap from the web to real-life with a pop-up shop set to open November 20th on West 57th Street in New York City. The store will be a 5,500-square-foot space, housing some of the most desirable, and cutting edge fashion currently available.
According to WWD the store will be stocked with:
A selection of Norma Kamali’s exclusive fashions for eBay, L.A.M.B shoes, handbags from Michael Kors and Dooney & Burke, Anthropologie dresses, cosmetics from M.A.C., Smashbox and other brands, and the Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue and Vera Wang Princess fragrances. Electronics, toys, home and garden items will also be displayed, but shoppers will have access to the entire eBay marketplace via Internet kiosks, handheld tablets and the eBay mobile phone application.
To celebrate the opening, eBay is hosting cocktail parties on Nov. 19 and Black Friday (notoriously one of the best days of the year for retailers). To further boost the shopping fervor, limited numbers of “daily deal” items will be given to the first 100 shoppers. But as an antidote to this mass consumerism, eBay will match every dollar spent in the shop (up to $200,000), donating to organizations such as Global Giving, Grammy in the Schools, Oxfam America, Right to Play, Save the Children, Share Our Strength, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Starlight, Toys for Tots, U.S. Fund for UNICEF and YouthAIDS eBay.
Could eBay’s brick-and-mortar shop herald a new shift in online retail, taking wares off-line? Earlier this year fashion-go-to website Refinery29.com held their Save Fashion pop-up shop in Penn Station, taking the concept of their Refinery Shops to a new level. However, this may signal and even greater trend of a blurring of the real vs. internet space as retailers begin to realize they need more creative solutions to the stagnant sales they have been experiencing post-recession. Either way, your buying choices this season just got a little more tangible.
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A flea marketplace placing its brand on Manhattan?
Is there any greater misbranding and waste of limited resources possible?
Most items on Ebay sell for $25 or less and have thin margins. There is really no room in those prices to waste the little ‘advertising fees’ Ebay sellers can afford to advertise to a high end public which is not part their main buyer group.
Unfortunately ‘branding’ and ‘merchandising’ classes have passed by on Ebay staff.
November 3rd, 2009 at 10:51 am