A couple of weeks ago, I was told about Ezebee.com. I decided to check out the site, and what I found was what Hernán termed “an international craigslist on steroids”. Think of Ezebee as a virtual {and highly international} farmers market for any small vendor. Basically, Ezebee gives you publicity and allows you to listContinue…
A couple of weeks ago, I was told about Ezebee.com. I decided to check out the site, and what I found was what Hernán termed “an international craigslist on steroids”. Think of Ezebee as a virtual {and highly international} farmers market for any small vendor. Basically, Ezebee gives you publicity and allows you to list your item {or service}, but you handle the sale. While upon first glance, Ezebee looks like a replacement for Etsy, many sellers use it as a means by which to get customers to their Etsy store {or their eCommerce website}.
I was curious about Ezebee, so I asked Christina of Ezebee for an interview. I hope that you can benefit from what I learned and add Ezebee to your mental rolodex of places to check out when you’re on the lookout for a special something. Without further ado, I would like to warmly welcome Christina to TPK!
Q:Where did the idea for Ezebee come from?
A: Ezebee.com was founded in late 2012 by Ossian Vogel and Frank de Vries, both active online entrepreneurs.
The idea for ezebee.com arose during the summer of 2012 when the two of them discussed how very small, creative companies and freelancers use the internet in times of crisis. Besides running their own website or shop (which for most part is already a challenge both knowledge-wise and financially), they also need to be very active on social media platforms in order to create sufficient traffic to their online shop. Not to mention, spending additional time to optimize for Google and other search engines which takes even more valuable time away from their business.
Ossian and Frank searched the web and could not find anything that really combines a working online selling platform with a strong and active social network. So they decided to create just that.
Q: What person or core group of people brought Ezebee to life, and how?
A: After 4 weeks of core development in January 2013, ezebee.com went online in a very early Beta and immediately attracted users from all over the world. Frank and Ossian then rented office space in the old town of Palma de Mallorca and started off with a staff of 12 highly motivated professionals in February 2012. Currently, there are 5 programmers and a wild pack of graphic artists, online marketers, writers and designers working for ezebee.com.
Q: At this time, where are the bulk of Ezebee sellers based?
A: By March 2013, Ezebee already had vendors from more than 35 countries. ezebee.com has a growing market in the U.S. and Spain and at the moment many of the vendors are from Germany.
Q: Where is Ezebee itself based?
A: The busy bees at Ezebee are working in Palma de Mallorca. Mallorca is a beautiful island and perfect for international start ups because there are people from all over the world living in Mallorca!
{Side note from Lindsey: I. Am. So. Jealous.}
Q: What differentiates you from Etsy? (What advantages do you present for the buyer in comparison to Etsy?)
A: We provide a free platform to start your business. When you post products, we do not take a cut of your sales, and unlike Etsy, your item does not expire so you don’t have to worry about reposting it. We also do not limit what you sell. While Ezebee does offer a lot of handmade products, you can find people offering services, secondhand items, and even manufactured products.
Q: Why should people sell on ezebee over Etsy? (No fees? New market? Better user interface? More control over products posted?)
A: Ezebee is completely free to use and finances its operations with internal ads and useful applications. As a seller on ezebee.com, you deal directly with your customers, we just provide you with the tools for them to find your brand and order a product.
Q: Is everything on Ezebee handmade?
A: No, because we believe that handmade is not a criteria for quality, fair production and design. We closely monitor the quality of the products posted and will reject mass produced or low quality items. But other than that, anyone can use ezebee.com, making it a lot more attractive also for buyers not originally searching for handmade items.
Although there are thousands of handmade items on Ezebee, we do not restrict what you can sell, as Ezebee members are free to offer anything like services, materials, art, food, travel, and of course, handmade items. Whatever your business is, Ezebee can help you market it.
Q: Are there direct checkout methods for Ezebee? I see a “send order inquiry” for products, but no option to direct checkout. How does ordering on Ezebee work?
A: It’s really simple actually. When you find a product, you click “Send inquiry”, fill out the form and write a message to the vendor. From there you work out the details of payment and shipping methods with the vendor. We do not interfere so it’s just vendor and customer.
Q: As a native English speaker with no knowledge of German (which seems to be the current predominant language on the site), should I still feel free to send order inquiries in English to sellers whose descriptions appear in German? Is there a way to filter results so I can see only items with English descriptions?
A: Yes! Most of the vendors do respond in English, even if that is not their first language. Also, if you are using the site in English, the Marketplace feed will show products that are written in English, however, you do have the option to change this and can find products from all over the world. Another great way to find products is to search products by country.
Despite language differences, Ezebee is a very friendly community and by posting in the Forums, Groups or on the Community Page, you can always find someone willing to point you in the right direction. Even if German is the predominant language at the moment, we have got a growing market in Spain, the US and even Australia. So things will change?
Q: Where do you see Ezebee a year from now? What are some Ezebee goals?
A: Our goal is to make selling online available to anyone without having to spend hundreds of dollars for web-hosting and shop-modules to start, and then have to spend the better half of a day trying to attract buyers to that page. Our goal is to simplify the buy and sell process to an extent that it feels like a regular checkout system but still allows the user to directly deal with his or her clients.
We already use an alternative currency (the BeeCoin) on ezebee.com, as we believe that there also needs to be an alternative to PayPal and CC payments with their high fees. The BeeCoins were really welcomed by our users and we will work hard to make the BeeCoin a valid alternative to standard payment methods.
As the world becomes more global every year, we believe that ‘beeing’ international from the beginning is a real asset, so we put a lot of effort into implementing more and more languages and translation tools to ezebee.com.
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