Yes. FeeBay won't collapse, but it WILL very likely lose its' Stranglehold on the Online Auctions venue... They may have more listings and more products, but the way they are going right now, they are very quickly becoming a "marketplace" venue (Indeed, if you would notice many of their press releases, advertising, etc all refer to itself as a "marketplace" and not as an auction house)
Marketplaces tend to be dominated by the Anchor stores - and that's what Fleecebay is going after - a bunch of anchor stores that can support their (fees-out-the-wazoo-bay) business model
They are positioning themselves to directly compete with the river , and are abandoning the auction listings business model as untenable with the large amount of resources they require to operate the websites worldwide, vs the income generated by sales and final value fees (remember, the economy has been tanking the last 2 years or so- people are not spending as much money on frivolities and collectibles, etc as they may have used to.. even a half a percentage point blip in these figures can have a massive impact on the bottom line of a top heavy company like sneezebay )
With the vast resources and infrastructure they have built so far, it makes sense to position themselves as a marketplace , changing their business model - the big sellers that make lots of sales, and can list thousands and thousands of items and can easily afford it and justify the expense because of the sales volume they achieve - will become their bread and butter - smaller sellers and hobby sellers, they probably consider just "chaff" that have little if any impact on their bottom line numbers.
So, Cant really expect sleazebay to fall flat, but definitely CAN expect them to lose their "#1 Auction venue" status - I think eBid will become recognized as the #1 *auction* website - as for who will be the #1 online marketplace.. well- who cares? it'll be either floozybay or The River..
Indeed, I would bet you, if you got the other place to break down their numbers between what is an actual auction listing vs. a store inventory listing, you'd find that eBid already has more listings.. and I'd bet that is exactly the reason for their (the other site's) recent pricing move- eliminating the store inventory format - since more and more sellers were discovering the economy of listing all their stuff at 3 cents a listing , even with the smallest store subscription level. - that was really impacting Da Bay's bottom line *because* they were not making as many actual sales (at the higher FVF%)
In any case, I'd have to say it's about 50/50 - eBid *will* become #1 in online auctions , however, it is highly unlikely that anyone is going to knock GreedBay off their perch in the marketplace, where they are moving to compete directly with The River.
At the very least, should SneezeyBay fail, most likely some other internet company will buy them out (Google? Microsoft? Amazon? perhaps one of those..) just to get the *brand name* .. perhaps under such new management, they might go some other direction- perhaps move to recapture the "auctions" market , or some other direction entirely .. who knows?
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