Shortly after eBay made huge changes in the Entertainment category in March by "rolling up" categories, Glacier Bay DVD's President, Randy Smythe reported that sales were down, and his auction-management service (like most at the time) did not support Prefill Item Information, or "Catalog" (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abu/y204/m03/abu0115/s03). Glacier Bay is one of the largest sellers of DVDs on eBay with nearly 147,000 unique positive feedback and usually has over 20,000 items on eBay at any one time.

On Friday, we spoke to Randy Smythe to see how he was faring almost 3 months after the changes. According to Smythe, Glacier Bay sales have been down about 10% since the March category rollup. "We had a mediocre March, and sales have been down 10 percent in April and May." Smythe believes about half of the decrease is due to the category rollup, the other caused by other factors.

Smythe believes the March category rollup was a wake up call. "We were doing so well, we didn't look at the holes in our system. It forced me to find ways to be more efficient at auctions and improve our systems. So the eBay category rollup was good from a long-term standpoint. But it wasn't fun going through it."

So are customers finding what they are looking for now that the new system is in place on eBay? And was eBay correct when they said it was just a painful transition period but changes would be good for the long term? Smythe believes, “Yes” on both counts.

Initially, Glacier Bay DVD's items did not show up when the categories were rolled up. The company uses ChannelAdvisor's auction-management services, and Smythe said he had to push the company to create automatic PreFill functionality. But, he gives eBay and ChannelAdvisor credit for coming through with a solution. Since April, Glacier Bay DVD has been using the automatic Prefill, which Smythe says is seamless.

Smythe concedes that while Glacier Bay DVD is getting orders, it's possible that its competitors are not if they are not using Prefill. But he said, they could use Prefill too. "I don't badmouth eBay. I don't like the fees I pay, I just have to work harder to bring them in line as a percentage of sales." Some people like to complain, he said, and if that's the way they want to do business, that's fine. But eBay is a lot bigger than his company, and rather than complaining, he finds a way around the challenges they present.

There are also advantages to Prefill, Smythe said. "Prefill opens doors for us to compete in other categories. We're expanding into books, CDs and video games as a result." Smythe says he had spent $60,000 creating his own database in building his business, and with Prefill, that's no longer necessary. So he sees Prefill as beneficial to small sellers so they don't have spend money to license or create product catalogs.

Any small company can grow on eBay, Smythe says, but it requires resources. He said many eBay sellers think Glacier Bay is one of the big guys. "We're small-fry in the rest of the world. We're hoping to keep the big guys out of our categories on eBay."