eBay Enterprise is absorbing Magento into its business unit. Readers may well ask, “who are these companies again,” as it can be a little confusing to keep track of eBay businesses.
eBay Enterprise was formerly called GSI Commerce, a company eBay acquired that works with very few but very large retailers and brands. (When you think of diamond sellers, think of eBay Enterprise clients.) The business unit provides many services, including ecommerce platform, call centers and fulfillment services as well as marketing services. eBay is increasingly using its Marketplace to provide these large clients with a targeted audience to whom they can market.
Magento on the other hand started as an open source ecommerce platform and is host to many mid-tier retailers as well as small merchants.
Last week’s announcement comes as no surprise to EcommerceBytes readers – in an exclusive interview with Magento founder Roy Rubin in June, he revealed that Magento was integrating its technology with that of GSI Commerce. As we reported, the integration means Magento Enterprise merchants are able to use GSI Commerce capabilities, including its logistics network and call center.
In fact, Rubin said, the integration had been in the works for the past year, and two merchants were already using the joint capabilities. Magento had over 150,000 merchants in aggregate at the time of the interview, and while it won’t release the number of enterprise clients, Rubin said it had added 900 just in the past year
Announcing the “new chapter in the evolution of Magento” last week, Rubin wrote, “What started out as a simple vision to enable retailers to drive online sales has evolved into the world’s leading ecommerce platform. We are proud of what we have accomplished as an ecosystem and we are excited about our future as we continue to transform the retail landscape.”
The organization will report into Mark Lavelle, who was most recently Senior Vice President for Strategy and Business Development at eBay Inc. and who will report directly into Chris Saridakis, President of eBay Enterprise.
