eBay In Person: Susan Phillips
by Angela
eBay Staff Member
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Susan Phillips |
Susan is the VP & Divisional Merchandising Manager for eBay Motors and eBay Business. She has overall responsibility for eBay Motors and the Business & Industrial Category. She also headed the teams that worked together to make eBay Live! 2005 successful. Susan started at eBay in April 2001.
Can you describe your job responsibilities and top priorities for 2005?
The Business and Industrial (B&I) category is one of the most exciting categories on eBay today. As always, our Community is showing the way forward by creating robust markets for many categories within B&I. For us, it's not just an interesting challenge in terms of enabling the buying and selling of different types of inventory. One of our biggest priorities in this category is to improve ways in which our sellers can reach out to the huge, untapped buyer market.
For eBay Motors, it's a different set of priorities because that
marketplace is more mature. One of our priorities here is to make the listing process easier for our For Sale By Owner car sellers. Not surprisingly, someone who only sells their car once every five years is reluctant to wade through a complicated listing process!
From a buyer perspective, over the years eBay Motors has revolutionized attitudes for buying vehicles online (read eBay Motors: A Look in the Rearview Mirror, from The Chatter archives.) However there still are some challenges to buying an expensive, complex item like a car without actually seeing or touching it. Improving the buyer experience on eBay Motors is another of our priorities for 2005.
So how does the work that you do in Motors and B&I support eBay's Purpose?
Meg Whitman, eBay's President and CEO, defines eBay's Purpose as “pioneering new communities around the world built on commerce, sustained by trust, and inspired by opportunity.”
I think that any time you are working with members directly, or on programs that enhance the Community's ability to pursue their passions and/or livelihood on eBay, you support eBay's Purpose.
On eBay Motors, as well as in the B&I category, we're fostering Communities and enabling commerce. We're trying to help buyers and sellers to capitalize on the tremendous opportunities that are out there.
I think that the jobs that my teams do really embody eBay's Purpose, on a day-to-day basis. Whether it's connecting with sellers through an individual conversation on the phone, via e-mail, in person at a trade show, at their offices, or by looking at the business trends in Motors or B&I, everyone on my teams always asks themselves this question – “What can we do to help our members be more efficient, more effective and more successful?"
Lastly, I think that the element of trust is something we strive to develop one-on-one with members in our day-to-day jobs, as well as at an aggregate level with the larger Community.
Do you buy or sell on eBay?
Yes. As a matter of fact, I was looking at a Graco Metrolite stroller on the site the other day. I went to Consumer Reports first to figure out what I should buy, because I haven't been in the market for a stroller for 10 years. When I figured out what I wanted to buy, of course I came to eBay. And as always, a lot of different ones were listed – different colors and different prices. But across the board, the savings were at least 30% off retail. And I just sat there, in my kitchen at home marveling at how great eBay is. My biggest purchase on eBay was a car. We bought a 2002 Toyota Highlander on the site last year from a dealer in Naples, Florida. Great transaction in every way – really terrific.
The most memorable thing that I've ever purchased on the site is probably a wedding present for my best friend, who loves Southwestern and Native American art. I bought her a Navajo wedding vase, which is a traditional wedding vase with two spouts to allow a bride and groom to drink from it together. It's a beautiful symbol for a wedding gift. It was tremendously meaningful to my friend and her new husband. And at the same time, I was helping a native artist achieve the eBay dream – it was very emotionally gratifying for me for both reasons.
What does it mean to you to be part of the eBay Community?
I think being part of the eBay Community has two very different aspects to it and they're almost polar opposites, which makes it intriguing. At one level, being part of the eBay Community means connecting to something much bigger than you. The whole is truly greater than the sum of the parts, and it's inspiring to be part of something you believe can change the world in a positive way.
On the other hand, eBay is a very personal type of an experience, in terms of connecting individuals. Let me give you an example: I bought a Halloween costume for my daughter on the site two years ago. The seller happened to be in North Carolina. We were emailing back and forth, just making conversation, and I asked where she lived in North Carolina. Well, it happened to be the town where my father-in-law grew up, and where my husband's aunt and uncle still live with their families. Because it's a very small town, I asked if she knew them. It turned out she did! It was just an unbelievable coincidence – a heart-warming, totally out-of-the-blue type of possibility. But I'm sure many such heart-warming moments happen on eBay every day.
Unfortunately, the costume that she shipped to me got lost in the mail. She had paid to insure it, so didn't stand to lose any money, but especially because we'd built up a little friendship, she was devastated that I hadn't received the costume. So she went to extraordinary lengths to track down the costume for me.
I found that she was pregnant at the time, so it was all the more moving that she went out of her way over an item of low dollar value. She works full time and sells on the site part time. Here she was with her own children, and another on the way. She had a lot of stuff going on and really didn't need to go to this trouble. But she did. And I thought, “You know what, this would happen nowhere else on earth, except on eBay.”
What did you do before coming to eBay?
I have been in traditional marketing jobs for about 15 years, across a few different industries. I worked in financial services and software, then after business school, I spent five years in advertising at a couple different big agencies. I got the opportunity to work on really traditional brands – Clorox Bleach, Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice and the like. Very old, established brands. Immediately prior to eBay, I worked at Excite@Home, which at the time was thought of as a "blue chip" Internet company, in the same league with Yahoo! and before anybody had heard of Google.
Why did you decide to come to eBay?
I got laid off at Excite in early 2001 and frankly, was very skeptical about coming to another Internet company. First, I never perceived myself to be a "start-up person" – for goodness sakes, I had worked on brands that were 100 years old and worked for companies with 100,000 employees! Second, having been laid-off from an Internet company that I thought was strong, and with two small children at home, I needed job security from my next employer.
But I emailed a couple of business school alumni who were working at eBay. I asked them about an open position for the Director of Marketing for eBay Motors, and more importantly what they thought of eBay. And they immediately responded enthusiastically that I must apply for the job and that I must come to work for this company because “it's completely awesome!” With that glowing recommendation in mind, I had no hesitation in applying. I received the offer the next Friday after I interviewed. I accepted the job on the following Monday and haven't looked back since!
What do you do for fun, away from eBay?
Who has time for fun? (laughs). I work here and I have two children with a third on the way! Kidding aside, with my very limited personal time, I probably spend too much time online. I also read and love movies – foreign films and old stuff mostly. My biggest passion is definitely the arts: music, drama, fine art and architecture/design, and I steal what time I can in pursuit of those areas. But because I'm a working mom, truly the vast majority of the time I'm not here is spent focused on my family. My daughter is eight, my son is four, and their little brother arrives in October. They take up more time than one has, but it's always willingly given.
