eBay celebrates 20 years in Ireland, and employs over 900 at its European facility in Dublin.
Siobhan Curtin has grown her career with eBay, having joined the company shortly after it opened in Ireland in 2004. “I worked my way up from customer service representative to senior manager, head of department, then, in 2021 to director of the customer experience team leading a large global service delivery team including financial services, across the UK, North America and Europe from our European hub here in Dublin.
“Back then, eBay was amongst the first of the big flagship tech giants to come into Ireland, and when I stepped through those doors for the first time in 2004 I had no idea I would have such an extended and rewarding career here.”
eBay set up its Irish base in 2004, with the company’s European headquarters now located at Blanchardstown in Dublin, employing over 900 people. In 2022 Siobhan took on the role of site leader for eBay Ireland.
“The role of site leader does bring you into contact with all aspects of the business. We have a phenomenal people culture here and it’s not just me who has had such a long tenure, as in fact we have 18 people who also started in 2004, and are still with the company today.”
Being an online company, every day is different, with change a constant. “That is exactly what I love about my job, every day brings different challenges, things happen very fast sometimes, and you need to be fluid and looking after our teams, who are in turn looking after our customers. Our culture is about making our teams feel valued, and is a major part of the job I do.”
eBay was originally founded as AuctionWeb in California on September 3, 1995, by computer programmer Pierre Omidyar as a hobby to make some extra money. His mission statement saw it as a site “dedicated to bringing together buyers and sellers in an honest and open marketplace.”
One of the first items sold on the site was a broken laser pointer for $14.83. Astonished that such a damaged item would find a willing buyer, Omidyar contacted the winning bidder, Canadian Mark Fraser, to check that he understood the pointer was, in fact, broken. The buyer replied simply: “I’m a collector of broken laser pointers”.
From this humble beginning, a global business was born. In 1997, Beanie Babies, the cuddly stuffed animals that took the world by storm, accounted for $500m (€462.3m) worth of sales on the site, representing more than 6% of the company’s total volume. The following year the company changed its name from AuctionWeb to eBay, and listed its shares on the NASDAQ, with an expected trade price of $18, but which outperformed expectations to reach $53.50 in the first day.
“It was a very different world back in 2004 for the company,” Siobhan Curtin recalls of the early days in Ireland. “All of our customer support at the time would have been managed through email. Now we do that through many different methods, including social media, messaging and apps.
“Technology is enabling eBay to reinvent e-commerce, with scalable solutions around pre-loved items and sustainability now being possible from all over the world through our site.”
The company is marking recommerce, which continues to grow in popularity, with its own dedicated day, announcing its inaugural Recommerce Day on May 21 and featuring a ‘takeover’ of the eBay homepage offering consumers opportunities to learn more about recommerce and finding pre-loved deals.
“We were the earliest pioneers of sustainability, and 40% of our gross merchandise value are pre-owned and refurbished products. In 2023, eBay created $4.9bn (€4.5bn) in positive economic impact, while avoiding 1.6 million metric tons of carbon emissions and 69,000 metric tons of waste staying out of landfill.
“Through recommerce, we are extending the life of products, diverting them from landfills, and empowering customers to make sustainable choices.” The company’s target of achieving 100% renewable energy for its data centres and offices is part of its clean energy initiatives around the globe.
“eBay is different in not owning any inventory, so rather than compete with our sellers, we are here for our sellers to make them successful. We do a lot of programmes for our sellers, helping them optimise their listing, connecting them with buyers all around the world. We would see ourselves as a unique and different marketplace compared to some of what may be termed our competitors.”
During the covid restrictions, the company helped hard-pressed businesses through their Up & Running programme, offering SMEs an alternative to their shuttered Main Street stores by using eBay as their ecommerce platform, at no cost.
Other initiatives include Stepping Stones, making available skilled jobs to candidates with refugee status looking for employment opportunities in Ireland. Begun in 2022, as a result of the war in Ukraine, it offered employment opportunities and training to refugees fleeing the conflict.
“So far, we have employed 19 people of refugee status, which came out of the Ukraine war, but which now includes people from many different countries who are in Ireland. And we are not just impacting the employees themselves, but also their families and their communities which, because of our remote working, are spread across Ireland.
“The people on our Stepping Stone programme have come from such diverse backgrounds and jobs in their own countries, they are helping us see things in a different way and are adding value to eBay. They may be learning from eBay, but we are learning a lot more from them.”