Irish businesses flock to eBay

05-03-2007

by Emmet Ryan

E-commerce website eBay announced it has hit the half a million mark on Monday and now claims more than 500,000 registered users in Ireland.

The online market place confidently claims 58 percent of all Irish internet users, and 16 percent of all Irish residents aged over 18, have registered on the site. eBay's Irish venture, eBay.ie was launched in June 2005 and together with its online payment system, PayPal, employs 1,200 Irish staff at its Blanchardstown offices in Dublin.

eBay Ireland's managing director John McElligott told ENN he was pleased with the figures and was confident that the bulk of those registered are active users. "Certainly a huge number of them are using the site regularly," he said.

McElligott said the holiday season played a key role in the site's growth with more users opting to buy online. "There was a huge surge of interest over the Christmas period," he said.

eBay has taken a greater focus in recent months on developing interest from SMEs and McElligott, who was appointed managing director in October 2006, said the interest from Irish businesses was greater than anticipated. "We launched a Seller of the Year competition and were absolutely overwhelmed by the number of entries," he said. "It was proportionally far higher than in other countries where we have held this contest."

The eBay managing director told ENN he expected the site's number of users, both consumers and businesses, to continue to grow. "We are in the midst of a strong growth phase," said McElligott. "When we launched in 2005 we had 200,000 users which has grown to half a million and we hope to continue at that rate."

Clothes are amongst the most popular items on eBay.ie with a garment bought by an Irish user every two minutes. One DVD is sold every four minutes to Irish buyers, while an item in the computing category is sold by an Irish user once every five minutes.

eBay was set up in 1995, and in addition to online purchasing it offers other online services through its subsidiaries such as PayPal, Skype and Rent.com. The online marketplace has more than 222 million registered users worldwide, with over 50,000 categories and around 100 million items for sale at any given time.