Unlike e-commerce giant Amazon, eBay has no intentions to create its own version of FedEx. Instead, the online auction service wants to partner with shippers to ensure that its sellers can get items to buyers on its marketplace as fast as possible.
One of the ways eBay is accomplishing this is through a new partnership with Silicon Valley on-demand shipping upstart, Shyp. The companies started testing a limited pilot program in December.
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For eBay, Shyp is a way to make it easier for sellers to send items, helping them to avoid the drudgery of going to the post office or a shipping store.
Using Shyp’s mobile app, eBay sellers take a picture of an item they need to send, enter the destination address, and the company will send one of its couriers to retrieve the item. The on-demand worker will then package the item, choose which shipping method—FedEx, UPS, or the U.S. Postal Service—is most cost-effective, and will mail the package for you. Users pay a flat $5 fee for every shipment, plus the shipping costs.
After importing information from the eBay seller’s account into Shyp, users see a feed of their recently sold items. They can then select items they’d like to ship, and request a pickup. Once shipped, Shyp and eBay will mark the sellers’ items as ‘Shipped,’ and notify the buyer.
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Shyp told Coins2Day that data from the pilot shows that eBay could benefit from the integration. Nearly half of the people who used the integration during the pilot had never sold on eBay before. Meanwhile, the sellers who had sold on eBay before increased the number of their listings by 60% after using Shyp.
Currently, Shyp’s service is available in just four cities: Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Chicago, So the integration is only available to a handful of eBay’s markets. But with these kinds of results, as Shyp expands its service areas, expect eBay to follow suit.
