Archive for March, 2010
March 31st, 2010
Granted, I maybe a little punchy given the duration of the last couple of days, but I decided to just turn on my Flipcam a little more at the office and get some behind-the-scenes footage with folks I work with.
I wanted to video the eBay Classifieds team as they got together for a group picture outside of our main building at San Jose HQ… I turned the video on a little early though.
Enjoy!
Cheers,
RBH
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March 31st, 2010
Had to share this quick vid with folks. Nice use of a local legend here in Campbell, CA. I’ve been wanting to use this guy to promote Ink for a while now… the eBay Classifieds team beat me to it. Classic!
Cheers,
RBH
March 30th, 2010
Stuck in Palm Beach because of a weather emergency, the irrepressible Simon Doonan, the Creative Director of Barneys, and his life partner, the quirky potter-slash-entrepreneur Jonathan Adler, get on the phone to gab with Lynn Yaeger about collecting.
“What’s great about plates is, you can wash them! I’m very prissy. I like a collectible you can Windex. That gives me beaucoup de joie!’ says the irrepressible Simon Doonan, the Creative Director of Barneys, when I catch up with him by phone to ask him about his collecting habits.
Doonan is stuck in Palm Beach because of a weather emergency, but that’s ok because 1) his life partner, the quirky potter-slash-entrepreneur Jonathan Adler, is right there with him and 2) this unforeseen delay means they have even more time to explore the thrift shops on Dixie Highway, where, Doonan says, “We have found so much groovy stuff over the years. What did we find there, Johnnie?” he calls out, and I hear Adler in the distance answer, “Weird ‘60s paintings, totally freaky stuff!” Not to mention some of those super-cleanable vintage dishes.
Doonan became so obsessed by a group of 1970s plates issued by artist Leroy Neiman and depicting a variety of clowns (“One of them looks like Leigh Bowery,” he tells me) that he has managed to fully assemble three sets, one for each of his and Adler’s residences in Palm Beach, Manhattan, and Shelter Island. “I actually found a lot of them online. There are five in the series, and I found the first at the 26th Street Market [in New York]. Then, I became so obsessed it set off an eBay frenzy! They make you feel good! They’re better than a dose of Zoloft!”
When pressed as to what he’s buying right now, Doonan says he loves Liberty of London floral prints—so much so that he is considering the purchase of a pair of Liberty of London for Target bicycles, a collectible of the future if ever there was one. “We could ride around Shelter Island on them! I hope people won’t throw rocks at us.”
Plates and bikes notwithstanding, Doonan denies being a fanatical collector. That definition, he cheerfully confides, describes his Johnnie, who takes the phone and admits that he is tooling around on eBay even as we speak. “I tried for a long time to kick it—it was a bad addiction. But now I’m back.” As for his other half, Adler claims that Doonan’s hands are hardly clean when it comes to compulsive collecting: “We’re both on the hunt for a bit of butch man-tiquing.”
Adler is full of good advice when it comes to the general rules of accumulation: he knows you may have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find the object of your dreams. And he insists that you must be rigorous in vanquishing those amphibians: “You have to not be afraid of throwing stuff out.” So what is Adler hunting for these days? “A lot of Gemma Taccogna—she was a cool Mexican chick who made groovy paper mache heads. Anna Sui has a ton of her stuff.” Does Adler have a ton too? “I have about 10. I need to crank it up. I hope I buy them all before this article comes out!” What else? “I find that Blenko glass is a great a space filler. Any awkward space, just add a bunch of colored glass.”
Suddenly Doonan chimes in that oh, they forgot to tell me, they also collect something called horological collages. “I think I cornered the market on vintage car collages made from old watch parts.” Somewhere in the back of my brain there is a trace memory of this sort of thing hanging on a den wall in Massapequa where I lived (and happily left) many decades ago.” Not only are Doonan and Adler collectors of these, er, works of art, but they are also scholars of the genre. “A lot of them were made by a British dude from the ‘60s called Kersh. And also a guy called Ken Broadbent,” Doonan elucidates. “They’re mostly British. I have about 50.” Is it a problem, displaying 50 horological collages? “It’s all a problem, a huge problem,” Adler adds in. “But they’re cute! They’re mostly eight by ten inches, but we have a really big one that’s like five feet wide.”
Just before we hang up, Adler shares with me one more poignant category of collectibles he is searching for. “I’ve actually bought back a lot of my own stuff. I just found a vase that I made in the late ‘90s. When you make stuff all the time, you sometimes don’t treat it as reverently—you’re on to the next thing. It’s great to find your own old stuff.”
And herein may lie the key to his whole collecting philosophy: “I make stuff for a living, I pour my heart into it. So I’m always looking for stuff by people who bring the same inspiration and passion to their work as I bring to mine.”
Shop eBay Like Adler and Doonan
1. Heading for Adler’s collection?
Vintage Gemma Taccogna Pin Cushion Papier Mache Head (starting bid, $59.99)
2. A thousand clowns
Leroy NEIMAN Royal Doulton PIERROT Collector Plate (buy it now price, $49)
3. Garden variety
Liberty of London Target Bike ladies cruiser (current bid, $600)
4. Glass menagerie
Vintage Clear Crystal Blenko 6 1/8″ Glass Ash Tray (buy it now price, $23.99)
5. Dude, where’s my car?
UNIQUE L. KERSH COLLAGE-ROLLS ROYCE COUPE 1930 (current bid, $9.99)
6. China syndrome
Jonathan Adler Duckling Vase (buy it now price, $60)
Photo of Adler and Doonan by Amy Sussman/Getty Images for Barneys
Lynn Yaeger is a fashion writer who contributes frequently to Vogue, Travel & Leisure, the Sundance Full Frontal Fashion site and the New York Times T magazine. She lives in an unrenovated circa 1925 apartment in downtown Manhattan, a space that she shares with far to many vintage reindeer sweaters, 1920s coats, and well loved dolls that last saw action in the First World War.
March 30th, 2010
All,
The eBay Classifieds team put together some short video vignettes promoting the new site. Here are a couple to check out.
Cheers,
RBH
March 30th, 2010
March 30th, 2010
eBay has relaunched its online classifieds site in the US as eBayClassifieds.com with an emphasis on trust and safety, customer service and user experience. Armed with my Flipcam and the new logo I managed to track down Martin Herbst, GM of eBay Classifieds, to ask him a few questions about today’s news:
You can read the full press release around today’s news here.
In conjunction with the rebrand, @KijijiUS is now @eBayClassifieds on Twitter.
You can download the eBay Classifieds Fact Sheet by clicking here.
Cheers,
RBH
March 30th, 2010
eBay launched two new iPhone selling apps today. One for the eBay.com global marketplace and one for eBay’s new classifieds site, ebayclassifieds.com.
Learn more about the new eBay Classifieds site HERE.
Learn more about the new eBay Classifieds iPhone Application HERE.
The eBay Selling iPhone application lets sellers list items for sale in less than 60 seconds and is downloadable for free via iTunes.
Check out a video demo here…
You can check out the full press release here. The fast facts doc that highlights the new eBay Selling application for iPhone is available for download here.
Also, according to the press release, on April 3, eBay will be introducing a new version of the eBay Mobile App specifically designed and created for the iPad.
Cheers,
RBH
Related Reads:
NY Times Bits: eBay Introduces a New Classifieds Site and More Mobile Apps
TechCrunch: eBay Expects To Sell $1.5 Billion Worth Of Goods Through Mobile Devices In 2010
March 30th, 2010
The free eBay Classifieds iPhone application is now available for download and allows users to buy and sell locally via the iPhone or iPod Touch.
The app interacts directly with the eBay Classifieds back-end so it provides a seamless selling and buying experience that is made specifically for the mobile device. The mobile app provides:
** Free ad postings in less than a minute with up to 8 photos, either from the iPhone’s photo library or its camera.
** Fast and simple search by keyword, location, price range, etc.
** Single-page ad view with reply, watch, and share features.
Check out a video tutorial of the app here:
The full press release is here.
You can download the eBay Classifieds App for iPhone fact sheet by clicking here.
Cheers,
RBH
March 30th, 2010
All,
I managed to catch up with Lorrie Norrington, President of eBay Marketplaces, toward the end of the first eBay: On Location in Atlanta last week.
My interview with Lorrie was originally intended to air to an internal audience – I had planned on putting this video together for employees only – but thought that the conversation was timely and a good Q&A session for external folks too. I particularly liked Lorrie’s challenge to all eBay employees. I couldn’t agree more.
Cheers,
RBH