How One Member Used the Developer's Program to Boost His Business on eBay
by Zigmund
eBay Staff Member

The eBay Developers Program provides access to the eBay marketplace through web services so developers can create a wide variety of tools and solutions that meet the diverse needs of buyers and sellers on eBay. The program offers a standards-based, easy-to-use development platform that is language and OS independent. The program makes integrating into eBay seamless and provides developers with an environment to test new ideas and create buying and selling solutions.

Steve Mack is the CEO of SuperPawn. SuperPawn is a retail business that wanted to extend its online presence, but was faced with several challenges in doing so. With the help of the Developer's Program, they were able to build a custom tool that worked with eBay and allowed them to get their business to where they wanted it to be.

Steve Mack shared his company's experiences with us below:

What is SuperPawn?
SuperPawn has been around for 128 years, mainly as a merchandise reseller. We deal in areas such as jewelry, watches, cameras, electronics, and more. There are 48 company and franchised stores nationwide, and we first went online in 2001. Four hundred and fifty employees take care of the needs of our 1 million-plus customers, 60,000 of which are online (and that number is growing rapidly).

What challenges did you face in expanding your business online?
Like most people, we were faced with the challenge of figuring out how to sell on the Internet while staying profitable. We did a study for three months, and learned that our "activity cost" (the amount it would cost to sell an item) would be $23 per transaction. This was due to all the things that went into selling, like packing and mailing an item, on top of our internal costs of doing business. That was the main obstacle…..we needed to make that number smaller. But we also needed a way for us to be able to list and manage our items on eBay easily, especially since we'd be dealing with items that come from various places around the country.

What made you become interested in eBay?
eBay's success was obviously attractive, and we knew there was a marketplace here. But we needed a way to create a better way for us to efficiently sell on the site. We didn't have anything set up to make sure items got in the correct categories or that we managed them correctly, etc. That's when we found the Developer's program.

What were your first impressions of the Developer's program?
The opportunity to get underneath eBay's hood was scary, but the nervousness started to fade when our development team started working with eBay's. There were some growing pains as we tried to figure how to best connect our system to eBay's, but now there is a lot of mutual respect on both sides.

What solution did you develop?
We wanted to connect SuperPawn's point-of-sale system to eBay; this would make listing, categorizing and fulfilling items much easier. For instance, we have 1,200 categories for our business, while eBay has 24,000, so we needed something that could match them up. We created software that we named AuctionMonitor. It lets us enter in information about the item we're selling (for instance, if it has batteries, if it has a strap, etc.), and it dynamically creates a new category for us and lists the item in the correct category on eBay. It connects the software we use at our retail outlets directly with eBay, so that the listings are fulfilled directly from the item's location, regardless of which outlet is selling it.

Has it been successful for you so far?
Absolutely! The new software is so effective that our "activity cost" has dropped to as low as 25 cents per item, allowing us to significantly expand our business. Plus we've now created a second company called zTradingindustries to resell our AuctionMonitor software to auction houses, pawn shops, and other retail businesses. Integrating AuctionMonitor with eBay has resulted in an extremely efficient and profitable selling mechanism for our stores.

Please go to eBay Developers Program to read more Success Stories and learn more about becoming part of this program.