Screen shot of The Inside Source online magazine.
When the beautiful people list their favorite shops, eBay might not be on the tip of their tongues, but eBay hopes to change that.
On Wednesday, eBay is unveiling The Inside Source, an online magazine about fashion trends, written and edited by glossy magazine writers and pitching the trendiest items for sale on eBay.
The new site is for the shopper “who is sophisticated, has a sensibility about fashion and lifestyle and may be familiar with eBay but maybe not the full extent of everything it has to offer,” said Meredith Barnett, the site’s editorial director. For example, clothes and furniture that are “flea market chic,” as Ms. Barnett describes it, are popular right now, but people may not think of eBay as the place to find them.
EBay has almost 200 million items for sale on any given day and sells much more than out-of-date clothes and used digital cameras, but the company is worried that many people, especially trendy types, don’t realize that.
People still think of eBay as an auction site, even though more than half of its goods are now sold at fixed prices, Mr. Marks said. They also think of it as a site just for used goods, even though it sells a lot of new, overstock and upscale merchandise.
EBay gets a huge amount of data from watching what its 88 million users search for and buy, Ms. Barnett said, and the magazine is a way to highlight those trends. It is also a way to take fashion and pop culture trends and feature related items on eBay.
EBay’s marketplace has been struggling for the past few years. Though the total of all transactions increased 7 percent last quarter, that metric had been declining. The new Web site is part of eBay’s effort to “re-engage consumers and shift perceptions of eBay,” said Alan Marks, eBay’s senior vice president of corporate communications.
Ms. Barnett is a former editor at Lucky, the shopping magazine, and co-founded a company called Store Adore, an online guide to boutique shopping. She has hired writers for W, InStyle and the New Yorker as freelancers.
For one story, a writer interviewed the actress Eva Longoria’s stylist about Ms. Longoria’s fashion choices. The article links to a few pieces of clothing inspired by Ms. Longoria’s taste and for sale on eBay, like a strapless silver Betsey Johnson dress for $59.99.
For another, a writer interviewed an expert antique collector, Judith Miller, who picked out a selection of chairs for sale on eBay, like a vintage Eames chair for $500. There are also interviews with eBay sellers about the trends they see.
“The merchandise is certainly there, but for somebody who isn’t an eBay addict or fanatic, sometimes you don’t know where to begin,” Ms. Barnett said. The job of The Inside Source is to curate the site for a certain shopper who is interested in the latest trends, she said.
The site is focusing on fashion in part because clothes, shoes and accessories are eBay’s biggest category, Mr. Marks said. It also includes home and garden and technology stories. The Inside Source is a marketing effort, and funding for the site is coming out of eBay’s public relations budget, but it could become a revenue generator down the road, he said.