No ROI? No Problem: Defying expectations of for-profit retailers, Patagonia invests in an eBay partnership that allows customers to resell their used clothing. ROI be damned

When the IT shop at Patagonia was handed a new project to link its website to eBay's, there was no need to look for an ROI. Everyone could see there would be none. The idea was to create a branded storefront on eBay for people selling used Patagonia clothing--a rival sales channel that anyone s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:CIO 2012-02, Vol.25 (7)
Main Author: Ybarra, Michael
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Clothing industry
Electronic commerce
Information technology
Partnering
Sales
Websites
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:When the IT shop at Patagonia was handed a new project to link its website to eBay's, there was no need to look for an ROI. Everyone could see there would be none. The idea was to create a branded storefront on eBay for people selling used Patagonia clothing--a rival sales channel that anyone shopping on the company's website could visit with a click. The partnership brought together two development teams on two different platforms. The main challenge turned out to be a limit in eBay's public API, which caps searches at 100 sellers at one time. Patagonia wanted a much larger community. The eBay development team responded by building a custom API for Patagonia's eBay storefront. The code performs multiple, parallel API calls to avoid the limiting issue.
ISSN:0894-9301