This week, two unlikely partners, eBay and online luxury boutique What Goes Around Comes Around (WGACA), released a curated capsule collection in what they say is the first of a series of collaborations between the two.
WGACA is bringing a curated collection of 1,300 luxury products, from brands including Fendi, Chanel and YSL, to eBay where customers can bid on the upscale products at a potentially much lower price point than can be found on WGACA’s online and physical stores.
Representatives from both companies pointed to the increasing competition in the resale market as something they are trying to strategize around. Rather than work against each other, the two decided to partner so they could each reach an audience they wouldn’t have otherwise easily accessed.
“This was an opportunity to do something at an entry-level price point,” said Seth Weisser, CEO of WGACA. “This is a way to put stuff out there for us to reach more aspirational clients [as opposed to a traditional affluent luxury customer]. We’re trying to leverage all the parts of what we can do with eBay’s vast audience machine. They have a huge international audience. We sell wholesale internationally with some partners in Europe and Japan, and we have international clientele at our retail stores. But eBay is a known and trusted commodity internationally.”
EBay has 180 million buyers globally, according to the company. The size of its audience, along with how widespread they are around the globe, was a major appeal for WGACA. On the other hand, WGACA has the kind of luxury credibility and inventory that eBay was looking to bring onto its platform. Some of the products on hand, coming from major luxury brands, will have a bidding price starting at $9.99. Like with any seller on its platform, eBay will take a percentage of the sales from WGACA’s collection.
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On the other hand, WGACA has the reputation for credibility and authenticity that eBay needs in order to court a luxury customer. While other luxury resale platforms like The RealReal have robust authentication teams for everything they sell, eBay only has guaranteed authentication for handbags, watches and jewelry. By selling products straight from WGACA, eBay can guarantee a level of authenticity for products in a wider range of categories.
“We have a high demand for luxury, and so many buyers globally looking for curated luxury pieces,” said Nicole Colombo, director of fashion at eBay. “We always want to partner with the strongest players in the industry and What Goes Around Comes Around is a market leader in luxury. They bring the inventory and the curation, and we bring the reach and the technology.”
Both companies will be promoting the first collection, called “Peace, Luxe and Rock & Roll” through their social channels as well as through an influencer campaign with models-musicians Theodora and Alexandra Richards.
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EBay has taken a more active role in the fashion industry recently. The company was one of the first platforms for consumer resale, with many players in the sneaker resale space pointing to eBay as an important progenitor. But eBay needs to be proactive about what kinds of services it can offer customers today if it wants to stay competitive.
Between its efforts toward courting sneakerheads and its partnership with WGACA to bring in the luxury crowd, eBay seems like it is aiming to shed some of the lawless reputation it has had in the past for a more customer-friendly approach that many resellers are adopting.
“We both have revenue metrics that we are trying to hit with this partnership, like with any partnership,” Weisser said. “But overall, this is also a long-term strategy about doing something experiential for our clients and building a broader audience.”
