“After reviewing the organization of eBay’s business in the Spanish market, the company has decided to discontinue its operations in Spain. We understand that this decision impacts our team and for this reason we have carried out a joint negotiation process, reaching a beneficial agreement for both the company and the employees. We want to guarantee our community of Spanish sellers and buyers that eBay does not plan to leave the Spanish market and will continue to provide you with the best possible support, as we already do in other European markets
The decision to discontinue local operations has been made after an in-depth review of business organization in the Spanish market. We do not expect the company’s operations and functions outside of Spain to be affected by this decision.”
With this concise statement, eBay has explained the situation in which its Spanish subsidiary will remain after the restructuring that will take place in the coming weeks, suffocating the fear of a possible closure of the web. Ebay.es will continue to function as normal, and the company will continue to offer support to sellers operating in the marketplace as it has done up to nowbut centralizing this service from their offices in Dublin. As sources close to the company have confirmed, the eBay office in Madrid will continue to operate until the process of transferring operations to Ireland is completed.
(Almost) 20 years of history of eBay Spain
Ebay arrived in Spain in 2002, and as one more step in a process of international expansion that had already taken it to other markets such as Germany, Australia or . Since then, the marketplace has become a reference for customers and sellers of multiple sectors and sizes, evolving and incorporating new features designed to be more attractive and effective at the sales level.
Last year eBay Spain began a new stage with the arrival of as Country Manager for Spain and Italy. Acciarri’s appointment came after March 2019, which was followed by a period of 12 months in which Alvaro Burgos (Director of Operations and Strategy for Italy and Spain) assumed the highest responsibility of the online giant in our country, until he announced his departure in March this year.
Acciarri landed on eBay in a key moment for its future evolution. With the challenge of taking advantage of the boom in electronic commerce and marketplaces after the coronavirus, this historical figure in the sector, which in Spain has 2.5 million users and more than 10,000 professional sellers, At the same time, it must compete with more and more alternatives for this type of small business and freelancers to sell online.
As Acciarri herself explained at the time, “Our commitment is to continue contributing to the growth of this fundamental sector in Spain based on what makes us unique: eBay is, above all, an extraordinary community of people and companies that come together on a platform that generates confidence to sell and buy everything they want or need. Our goal is for more and more companies to join this great community, and to be able to take full advantage of the opportunity that eBay offers them to reach buyers from all over the world.”
The threat of Aliexpress and El Corte Inglés
As we said, this is a transcendent moment in the evolution of eBay Spain, in which marketplaces are becoming an ideal platform for small sellers to make their leap to eCommerce, both nationally and internationally. But in addition, eBay faces a intensification of competition, that threatens its usual status as number two of the largest in the sector: as we saw in it, it was the one that grew the most in market penetration compared to the last study (+7%), surpassing Ebay, which is decreasing its share since 2018.
We will see how his career evolves after this restructuring in our country.
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