It was simply a contraction of Echo Bay Technology Group, a name Omidyar used for his web consulting business because "it sounded cool". The echobay.com web address had been taken. A contracted form, ebay.com, was available.
Now 37 and living with Pam and their two young children in Nevada, Omidyar is estimated by Forbes magazine to be worth $10.4 billion. Although Omidyar remains chairman, Meg Whitman, an energetic former Disney executive, has been running the company since March 1998. This has left the publicity-shy Omidyar time to devote to his next goal: to give money to causes that, as he sees it, use the networking power of technology to "make the world a better place".
In the company mantra, eBay is "just a platform", letting the busy mother in Ascot compete on equal terms with the global corporation in Akron. But this, critics say, is what lets fraudsters prosper, their unvetted auctions ensnaring the unwary for as long as eBay leaves them to it. This is not, of course, how Omidyar sees it: eBay’s hands-off approach lets its users "become empowered by participating in an open and honest marketplace", discovering "their own power to make good things happen". The ponytail may be long gone, but not, it seems, the multi-billionaire’s hippie idealism.
In the spare bedroom of an unassuming semidetached house in Bristol, Helen Southcott, 27, sits answering some of the day’s 500 e-mails. Three feet away, tapping heavily on a keyboard on the same cluttered desk, Southcott’s fiancé, Matthew Ogborne, monitors the bids rolling in on some of the 2,000 items that he listed yesterday for auction.
Until June 2003, Ogborne, now 26, was making an uncomplicated living as a photocopier engineer, and driving a rusting H-registration Metro. He still drives the Metro – but today, as an eBay trader calling himself "MoggieX", Ogborne has a turnover approaching £1m "any day now". In eBay language, that makes him a "Titanium Powerseller", putting him among its top few earners in Britain.
The venture began two years ago with a £2,000 credit-card debt, after Ogborne chanced upon a supplier of digital cameras. He found he could easily make £50 on each by selling them on eBay. He then found an electronics manufacturer to supply him with DVD players, memory cards and home-theatre systems at prices that would let him undercut the high street. Demand was so great that by summer 2003, he’d quit his job and was working from home. "Quitting the job was the most liberating experience for me," says Ogborne. "The hours, and the pay, are much better here." By last summer, the business was bringing in up to £77,000 a month. "It scared the living daylights out of our accountant," he says, sipping tea from an eBay mug. "We’ve doubled turnover since May; I intend to do so again by the summer. The volume of feedback is mind-boggling."
Southcott has also given up her job in fashion retail to take care of "customer service". This, Ogborne explains, ensures that feedback remains high, which in turn attracts new business and higher prices. After 12,400 customers, MoggieX claims a 99.7% positive rating. "The feedback works for us too," he says. "If a customer has no feedback and is buying £800 worth of kit, you get suspicious and check them out. Warning bells ring if they’ve bought lots of 99p items simply to build up feedback. But if they’ve been buying golf clubs – well, that’s a human being, isn’t it?"
At eBay’s UK headquarters, in a Georgian square by the Thames in Richmond, Surrey, you hear a great deal spoken about the "community". The membership might not be welcome here in person – the building is unmarked, the phone numbers unlisted – but as Whitman sees it, they are the company’s "soul" and the reason for its success. They loyally offer suggestions on its voluminous bulletin boards; they report back when they find auction rules being breached. Doug McCallum, the UK managing director, calls them "the biggest Neighbourhood Watch in the universe".
That makes Dan Wilson one of eBay’s more important UK employees. As "community manager", the 27-year-old is responsible for monitoring members’ concerns. When auction fees are raised, as happened in January, he will bring their worries to his bosses’ attention. If he hears horror stories about eBay customer support, he investigates. "We’re not a democracy, true, but it makes good business sense for us to work with the community," Wilson says. "They have to make money for us to make money – so I really don’t think it’s the shareholders who are running the show."
As with all eBay employees, Wilson is obliged to trade there himself: internal competitions reward staff with the most improved feedback scores. His most recent sale was an electric coffee grinder that cost him £12.50 in the Whittard sale, which he sold for £18.50. He also made £400 on a box of old 78rpm records that he bought on the site for £1. "Call me the Terrible Trotter, but I don’t think you can look the community in the eye unless you know what they do."
The real stars, mentioned with reverence by staff at HQ, are those who are turning over six- or seven-figure sums from home. "Some have given up senior management positions; others are mums who have built up their business by listing their goods when the children are asleep," says Elspeth Knight, responsible for Britain’s "Powersellers", those conducting the most transactions. They include Julie King, 33, who was reluctant to return to her demanding job as an IT consultant after giving birth to Lewis two years ago. She decided to try selling shoes from her North Tyneside home. The result was killer-heels-com, where you can buy £15 party stilettos or £14 cowboy boots.
"We now list about 400 pairs at any one time. We expect turnover this year to reach about £150,000, up from last year’s £98,000," she says, tired having just put Lewis to bed before another evening packing shoes. That "we", by the way, is deceptive: King, a single mother, runs the business entirely by herself, from visiting wholesalers to answering e-mails. "It’s 16-hour days. I’m earning less than I was in IT, but this lets me see my littl’un grow up," she says.
