eBay to Help Sellers Personalize Goods with Customization Feature

eBay will launch customization features to reduce friction between buyers and sellers for orders of personalized items. eBay CEO Jamie Iannone announced the feature during Wednesday afternoon's first-quarter earnings call with Wall Street analysts.

Iannone said, "Beginning next month in the UK and Germany, we will offer a new capability to all sellers to offer personalized goods in categories such as Home, Fashion, and Jewelry.

"This will allow buyers to find and enter specific customization requests to the seller.

"In the past, this process was manual, which limited GMV. But we believe this new experience can significantly improve customer satisfaction, bring more supply onto the platform, and capture more growth.

"We plan to expand this capability to all major markets in the coming months."

Iannone said eBay does millions of (customized) items on the site today, but with friction between the buyer and the seller. The new capability offers a seamless experience.

The challenges for eBay sellers who currently wish to offer personalized goods include:

- eBay restricts communications between buyers and sellers.

- eBay expects fast handling time and speed of delivery.

Iannone provided no details on how the new feature would work, but note that he said it would be restricted to certain categories.

eBay had piloted customization capabilities in Germany in July of 2019, it's unclear how next month's launch may be different.