Interview with Suleman Mehar - Head of Brand Acquisition eBay

Steve: You have a fascinating background Suleman. Can you give us an overview of what you were doing before you worked for eBay?

Suleman: I have 14 years’ experience in e-commerce, and prior to eBay I started my career, from university, with Amazon.??I landed a role with Amazon to grow their marketplace.??My remit was to target SMEs through all the various categories and help grow the Amazon business.

I did that for about two years – and then moved on to the next part of my journey with Amazon in?the?Fulfilment by Amazon [FBA].?I helped launch the Fulfilment by Amazon service back in 2009, and I was one of the first members of that team. I worked closely with the operations and products teams helping to launch the program within the sales team.

After fulfilment there was a small stint with product ads, which was advertising, and from that I moved to Amazon Payments which is Amazon’s version of PayPal.??Again, I was the first person in the UK team, so I helped launched that, get it off the ground, then two years later, I moved on from Amazon.

Steve: What attracted you to eBay? What was it about the business that appealed?

Suleman: In terms of why eBay, I think if I look at eBay as a business and if I look at my career journey at Amazon, it all began with trying to get SMEs on to the marketplace. eBay is home to hundreds and thousands of SMEs?and does this really well, so it felt like a natural fit.?I was recruited by eBay to specifically drive enterprise level accounts onto the website – which had a lot of synergy with what I had done previously, and it’s been great bringing my experience to a business like eBay.

Steve: You must have been a perfect fit – a wanted man I imagine?

Suleman: Absolutely.

Steve: I’m keen for you to talk about your current role, including the team and the categories you look after. But first, I’d like to hear from you in terms of priorities, your current role and why Home and Garden is important on eBay?

Suleman: I joined eBay in November 2018, and I was the first acquisition manager within the team, focusing on Fashion and Home and Garden at that time. The was a lot of potential for development and expansion at this time, but I was initially pulled in the direction of Fashion because we already had a lot of brands in the pipeline.

Three-quarters of the way through 2019 we added another person to the acquisition team – Helen Riley, who now manages the Fashion category - so my focus became Home and Garden,?which is massive. My journey with Home and Garden really started in August 2019 and that’s where I met?Elliott as one of the first opportunities I was looking at was with Toolstation.

The journey took us into 2020, during which we had a fairly substantial target. My remit was Home and Garden and P&A (Automotive parts and accessories) and it was really to drive gaps in selection that we had, based on the conversations we were having with the category managers.?

The category managers were telling us where we had range gaps and whether it was branded inventory or unbranded inventory and then it was up to the acquisition manager to go out, build those relationships, either through networking, through agencies, visiting events, trade shows, webinars etc; building those relationships through and then taking them through the eBay journey, getting them onboard and handing them back over to the category managers once they’d launched.??

SC: How many people are currently in your team and what are their roles?

Suleman: It’s been great building a strong team and hiring new talent. At present we have a team of seven acquisition managers across all the different categories, including a partner manager to manage those networks. The remit for the category managers is to focus on inventory gaps. In Home and Garden specifically, there is a lot of opportunity, so we’ve appointed a few more team members to really tap into that.?

During 2020 we found that sometimes it’s a challenge to get in front of the right people, even though we have contacts with agencies, through trade shows, etc. When trade shows came to an abrupt halt in 2020, we had to change tack and started to look at industry influencers and consultants, and that’s when we started speaking to you, Steve. The objective was to leverage the relationships that you have and see how we could network and work together to help those businesses that were struggling through the pandemic, offering them a lifeline.

Steve: I think it's fascinating that a lot of companies who haven’t partnered with eBay, have no idea about the amount of support you offer.??They think they have to build everything themselves, deal with all the IT challenges, but that’s not the case.??Do you offer a significant amount of support from your team?

Suleman: We do and I think a lot of people are surprised by that, having worked with other marketplaces. eBay is unique in that they have a dedicated acquisition team, a dedicated on-boarding technical support team and growth advisors, so there’s a number of teams here to help facilitate the on-boarding journey, and to make sure that we as eBay maximise the selling opportunity for the brands and retailers as well.

Steve: If I was working for a company who had been considering the eBay opportunity for a while and was keen and interested to get involved and start selling, is the start point the category manager, who would then put them in touch with someone in team, is that how the process works?

Suleman: Depending on where the lead originates – whether it’s from a category manager or a consultant – it will end up with an acquisition manager in my team. The acquisition manager will help facilitate the on-boarding process, so that’s introducing the technical on-boarding team and setting up the initial meeting. We have a thirty-minute initial call with various different stakeholders from the brand or retailer, and that can include someone from the technical side, and the next stage is a three-hour workshop.

And this is what people probably aren’t really aware of. We hold a three-hour workshop for anyone in the team who is going to be part of the project, from warehousing, logistics, customer service, finance, and obviously anyone who is technical.??The first part of that workshop is eBay 101.??We always assume the potential seller has zero acknowledge and we guide them through how the website and processes works, how to launch a storefront, how to manage listings, the importance of content and what a good customer journey actually looks like.?Then going into the second part, the onboarding workshop is really the nitty gritty on how they actually integrate – what kind of systems they have.??The on-boarding manager understands what systems they have today and what’s the easiest, best and most resourceful way to integrate.

Steve: Is there an expectation that the company has to onboard at the end of that initial workshop, or could the thirty-minute call be a discussion, and if they really want to progress, then they move on to the workshop?

Suleman: Absolutely. The initial call is really there to understand where the brand or retailer is with their journey with marketplaces including eBay.??Sometimes, we have a brand or retailer that goes through the 30-minute workshop but then really needs to go through the three-hour workshop to fully understand how much work is involved, and what they need to schedule in with their IT roadmaps.?

So really, its an education piece to see where they are and sometimes we go through the workshop and they say, ‘actually, it’s a really straightforward project, we can move you up the ranking and integrate in a quicker way’. We’re there to help onboard sellers but also for them to understand how much resource is required and how we fit in to their own IT roadmap.

Steve: In terms of Home and Garden, we talk about it being a very important category for eBay, why do you think that is? What is it about the eBay customer and the Home and Garden categories that is such a perfect fit?

Suleman: The Home and Garden category is vast and we have a dedicated team of acquisition managers that oversee it – we think there’s still a lot of untapped opportunity within the category. If I look at the eBay customer, they’re looking for good value, and if I look at Home and Garden over the last 18 months, the category has grown substantially because everyone was at home and everyone wanted to do some DIY. eBay ticked the consumer criteria: people have been at home, people were looking to improve their homes and gardens, and they wanted great value during a time of financial uncertainty.?

Interest in Home and Garden on eBay soared. In turn, this created a longer target list – we knew people were searching more for specific items on the catalogue – and, armed with that data, our category managers were coming to us to highlighting different opportunities for inventory. That’s why Home and Garden is such a big category.

Steve: I’m interested in terms of brands, because we’re seeing more and more brands engaging with you, Toolstation being a really good example.??So are you looking to acquire sellers from the smallest manufacturers and brands up to the biggest retailers, is that fair to say?

Suleman: We’re looking for the largest retailers in the Home and Garden sector, plus the distributors and manufacturers and the main reason for that is that it comes down to range selection.??We’ve got hundreds and thousands of sellers on our website today – some of them are small businesses and others are mid to very large size businesses. What we've seen over the last two years is that a lot of our SME's sell across multiple platforms. They might have their own physical stores and their own websites and eBay successfully complements those.??What we’re in the process of doing now, is expanding our network into the established retail brands and the leading manufacturers, because they hold the key to unlocking large ranges and the high levels of stock required to meet the growing demands of our customers.

Steve: Are there any particular product categories within Home and Garden that you’re most interested in???What are your priorities in terms of product areas?

Suleman: DIY - is a leading focus for my acquisition team, purely because everyone has been at home for the last year and given DIY a lot of focus – same goes for furniture. Home and Garden is a huge category and within that I think everything is pretty much a priority!

Steve: OK, that’s really interesting.??So the larger sellers, the retailers and brands, they would work directly with the category managers, but what if it’s a smaller business, a smaller brand, how would they work with eBay.

Suleman: We have a group of core category managers who work with the largest brands and retailers within their sector.??If there’s a brand that doesn’t fit within our target list, we’ve got another programme called Pro-Trader which is a sub-set of category managers who will work with the next level sellers down on the target list.??So, no matter what size you are, in terms of brand, manufacturer or retailer, we’ll find a fit in terms of somebody being able to support you from a category manager perspective.

Steve: What would you say to any company who is considering partnering with eBay?

Suleman: eBay is home to hundreds and thousands of SMEs and draws in 29 million active buyers a month here in the UK alone. On eBay, you know you’re going to have eyes on your products! It’s a great opportunity to diversify your business, reach new customers, or create a home for different product lines. Most importantly there is a team of real people - like me - behind the marketplace, ready to work with you to make eBay work for your business.

Steve - Thanks Suleman, that's been a really useful insight into the workings of the eBay business.?

If you'd like to be introduced to the Brand Acquisition Team at eBay, then DM me today via LinkedIn or simply type Yes into the comments section below.

Steve Collinge is an international speaker, influencer, retail commentator and is Managing Director of Insight Retail Group Ltd and executive editor of Insight DIY. You can follow Steve on?LinkedIn here?on?Twitter here?and contact him via?DM on LinkedIn.