Ooh, eBay Goes Glossy!

EBay, the virtual junk shop (okay, okay, "online marketplace") we all know and sometimes love, is planning to revamp its image, apparently. The world's most famous auction site has recruited former magazine editor, Andrea Linett, to be Creative Director of eBay Fashion. Apparently, sites like net-a-porter (and its soon-to-be-launched brother site, Mr Porter) which have more editorial content and better presentation in general have prompted this change. It’s thought that by taking inspiration from these high-production-value sites that eBay can maximise its potential with a spot of a makeover. Linett’s plans include added flash sales and exclusive collections with designers like Derek Lam - available this spring as well as glossy imagery to bring the general experience upmarket a bit. ‘It is the same kind of shopping experience,’ Ms. Linett said, ‘except that it’s a marketplace instead of a magazine.’ So far, so good. It has also been mentioned that one way they would improve the site would be to make it easier to navigate and easier to find items on there by searching. But this, in our opinion, would be to tamper with the very DNA of the site. If eBay simplified its labyrinthine systems, then it would completely lose its USP and become just another online shop, like any other. Surely the whole point of it is to provide us with those elusive goals in life, that tantalising day, which hasn’t happened yet but surely will, where we manage to buy an Hermes Constance bag for 50p AND offload all our old tat at a vast profit.