Mercent helped launch SmartBargains.com onto the eBay marketplace, the first service provider to launch a client under eBay's new "Large Merchant Services API" technology announced last week. Mercent CEO Eric Best told AuctionBytes it was in the process of integrating a number of other merchants onto eBay, but could not disclose their identities. "It's still a small percentage of our overall portfolio of clients," he said.

Best also said that the SmartBargains rollout on eBay was being done incrementally. "I would expect you'd see more products very soon," he said on Thursday.

Mercent is an online advertising agency focused on the large retailer and counts REI, Guess and Crabtree & Evelyn among its clients. Best said the company's core competency is in comparison shopping engines and Amazon. "It will be in eBay very shortly, because we're going to have a lot of operating experience here by the end of the year."

Best also revealed that Mercent is working with Amazon's fulfillment service on behalf of its clients. "We think that it's very likely that certain of our merchants will hold inventory in Amazon's warehouses and pay for that service through the Fulfillment by Amazon service. And by virtue of the fact that we're promoting those listings on eBay, it's quite likely that eBay purchases will end up being fulfilled out of an Amazon warehouse. Just by virtue of the fact you've got these two companies providing complementary services - it's demand generation for the merchant on eBay, and it's demand fulfillment, order fulfillment, for the merchant on Amazon."

Best said he believes Amazon is likely to provide some preference to merchants who use its Fulfillment by Amazon service in terms of how their listings are prioritized on the website. "I think there's a consumer experience argument for that. If Amazon controls the fulfillment process, and they control shipping latency and the overall customer experience post-sale, then they have a higher confidence that the customer experience is going to be positive and there's a customer-centric motivation to prioritize those Fulfillment by Amazon customers."

As for discussion among long-time eBay sellers about eBay's recent preferential treatment of larger merchants, Best said, "As a service provider, we are not privy to any information about how our customers are classified or their payment terms."

He added, "Our clients are looking at (the eBay) platform as an opportunity. In many cases they're looking at it as an unknown, and I think they're optimistic about the impact it can have on their business. Certainly the overarching perspective among these large sellers is, hey this is a challenging economy, we're going to look at ways to reach the consumer any way that we can, and eBay is making some strategic changes and technology changes that are making the platform more accommodating to these larger sellers that scale, and so maybe this is a time to go give it a try. But lest anyone think that these large sellers are coming in with the attitude that they're going to crush the little guy or somehow render the auction business obsolete, I think that's ridiculous."

AuctionBytes will be running the full interview with Mercent CEO Eric Best in the December 7th issue of AuctionBytes Update.

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