eBay's Year of Small Business

We've written before about the rapid growth over at eBay's B2B venue, Business Marketplace. It targets small businesses which need goods (such as PCs and restaurant supplies) and services to run their operations.



Now, in an article by Small Business Computing, Jay Fiore, an eBay marketing manager, reports that eBay believes 2004 will be the year of the small business. Since small businesses are leading the market recovery, the effects are being felt on eBay in the form of stepped up activity:

"We seem to be in a recovery cycle and the small business market, by its nature, is leading the way," Fiore said. "If your resources are limited but business starts to pickup, all you can do is buy more and hire more. A small business can't expand without doing that."

The eBay site now handles so many transactions that its activity mirrors the market as a whole. Tracking eBay Business Marketplace activity (i.e., what's selling, what's not) may prove fruitful as a way to track small business market trends.