“Local commerce companies like Milo are blurring the lines between in-store and online shopping”

“Local commerce companies like Milo are blurring the lines between in-store and online shopping,” said Mark Carges, chief technology officer and senior vice president, global products, eBay Marketplaces. “By making accurate, real-time, local store inventory and pricing available to online and mobile shoppers, we see a huge opportunity for local retailers, small businesses and eBay sellers to reach more buyers, and for consumers to make more informed buying decisions.”

Carges continued, “Since eBay is an online marketplace and doesn’t compete with brick-and-mortar stores, adding local store inventory to the eBay marketplace is a natural extension of what we’ve been doing for 15 years – bringing buyers and sellers together to access the largest selection available anywhere.”

With the acquisition of Milo, eBay strengthens its position as the place where consumers go for their shopping needs. According to comScore Inc., eBay handled more than 2 billion U.S. product searches in the third quarter. 1 Amazon saw 847 million, while Google handled 226 million product searches over the same period. ¹

With more than 140 retail partners, including nearly 90 small and medium-sized businesses, the company believes that Milo will be a great fit within eBay’s overall marketplaces business. Like eBay, Milo enables small businesses to compete with large retailers. And, through the addition of Milo, eBay plans to bring the inventories of even more small local retailers online and to help existing eBay sellers with brick-and-mortar locations and compatible inventory systems to sell locally.

“As one of the last true brick-and-mortar stores for skaters, we’ve been extremely fortunate to have our unique product selection visible to shoppers on Milo.com,” said Konstantin Shostakovich, manager of Black Diamond Sports in Palo Alto, Calif. “Reaching potential customers wherever they may be – whether it's online or right outside the door – is imperative in order to stay competitive and continue bringing foot traffic into our store.”

eBay plans to integrate Milo’s local product feeds into both its online marketplace and its leading mobile applications, providing millions of U.S. shoppers with accurate, real-time product pricing and local product availability inventory. eBay's barcode-scanning iPhone application RedLaser will soon be available with the addition of Milo local results.

eBay expects that the integration of Milo on both its site and mobile applications will help consumers find great deals, whether looking to buy online or in-store. It will also help retailers of all sizes reach a large volume of shoppers who are researching products online before they make a purchase decision. Forrester predicts that cross-channel shopping – researching online, buying offline – sales will be $1.3 trillion and account for nearly 50% of total retail sales by 2013. ²

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. eBay does not expect this acquisition to have a material impact on its financial guidance as issued in conjunction with its third quarter earnings release on October 20, 2010.

1 ComScore Inc.

2 Forrester Report, “US Online Sales Forecast: 2008-2013”, Feb 2, 2009

Source: eBay USA