Word: ebay
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...unreal auction house in question is, of course, eBay, which is in many ways the most powerful pure-play Internet force on planet Earth in 2001. It has recently become the top e-commerce destination, growing at a rate of roughly 1 million users per month. While its brethren in the legendary website club (namely Yahoo! and Amazon.com) suffer alarming slowdowns in growth, eBay posts quarter after quarter of stunning profits (its latest: $21 million, an increase of more than 150% on the same period last year...
...buyers and how much they're willing to pay. Haggling is not only mandatory, it's automated. Sales have a deadline; everything must go. And most importantly the quality of the bazaar increases exponentially with its size. There are rival online auction services - Yahoo! and Amazon.com again - but eBay still has the lion's share of the market, about 85%. Put simply, it maintains the lead because it has the lead. If you're a seller, there's nowhere better...
...Unchecked by any complex laws of economics, eBay spreads like a virus. There are few geographic restrictions: Australian, Austrian, British, Canadian, French, German, Irish, Italian, Japanese, New Zealand and Swiss versions of the website are available. There are practically no legal restrictions, especially since a San Francisco court recently declared the auction service could not be held responsible for pirated or bootlegged music sold on its site (Napster should be so lucky). Its name has entered the global lexicon: "I bet you'll find that on eBay" has become the punch line to a thousand jokes. For the media, eBay...
...Then Young decided, on a whim, to start listing the bags themselves on eBay. Her good deal and her low overhead meant she could charge less than retail stores, even after shipping costs. Soon she was doing well. Very well. That's when she decided to sell the bubble wrap itself, not just the bags. Young was already buying the stuff for her own packing needs in 750-ft. rolls. She just increased her order. By a lot. And she got a little system going. Since 250-ft. units sold best, every roll that came off the semi...
...Young is the biggest shipping-supply seller on eBay, although competitors are multiplying (you can't hide on the network). She handles 150 orders a day, nearly twice as many as a year ago, and she has 35,000 customers in her database. Young has reached a legendary status on eBay. She's one of only a handful of 'shooting stars': users with a feedback rating, eBay's form of customer evaluation, of more than...