To eBay faithful, Hub convention a selling point

If you buy a pair of shoes from Jon Kuhlmann, expect to pay for them before you try them on.

Kuhlmann, cofounder of Grapevinehill Inc. of Danvers, sells major-brand shoes by mail through the Internet auction service eBay Inc. He has already shipped more than 100,000 pairs so far this year and more than half a million since the business launched in 2002, all without touching a shoehorn.

"It's one of those shockers for people who don't know the eBay world," Kuhlmann said.

But it wouldn't shock the roughly 10,000 people who've come to the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center this week for eBay Live. It's a yearly festival for the people who sell merchandise through eBay's auction service and online storefronts.

Arthur Rabson, a pathologist at Tufts New England Medical Center who sells silver napkin rings on eBay in his spare time, considers himself an eBay hobbyist. "I make pocket money from it," he said. "It's just a bit of fun."

But he still invested the $100 fee to attend eBay Live. "I'm hoping they'll teach me things," he said. And if he sells just a few more napkin rings this year, the visit will pay for itself.

As eBay as a website has matured, sellers are faced with challenges they didn't face 10 years ago, said Jim Griffith, eBay's dean of education. For instance, many eBayers have no idea how to provide customer support, keep financial records, or back up data .

"They don't think they're going to start a business. What happens is it catches up to them," said Griffith. "It becomes an ever-increasing need for more information for them to do it properly."

By providing face time with eBay chief executive Meg Whitman and other top company officials, eBay Live also helps the company maintain relations with the independent business people whose selling activity generated more than 70 percent of eBay's 2006 revenue of $6 billion. It's a strong marriage, but not without signs of strain: Because of slowing growth, the company raised its selling fees, a move that cut into merchants' profits. The company has also been beset by crooks selling counterfeit products and by complaints about technical problems that cut into vendor revenues. And although eBay dominates online auctions, there are plenty of online storefronts that offer attractive alternatives to big-time eBay merchants.

Last year's fee hike mainly targeted those who sell at a fixed price, instead of at auction . Hundreds of angry merchants abandoned the site after the increase , but Karsten Weide, an Internet analyst with IDC Corp. in Framingham, said this was exactly what eBay wanted. The higher fees not only padded eBay's profits, but also drove away many low-end retailers offering cheesy products. "One of the complaints eBay users had was that there was too much clutter," Weide said. EBay's more upscale merchants aren't exactly thrilled by the higher expense , but they're willing to live with it. Rabson says the 10 percent eBay typically charges is simply "the cost of doing business."

Technical glitches are another irritant. Andrea McDonough of Nahant makes a living selling women's designer clothing. Her eBay online store, Fashion On The Ocean, features $500 skirts and $1,000 evening dresses. But she estimates she lost thousands of dollars in sales when a system breakdown prevented users from bidding for her goods. EBay's response -- a check for $50.

McDonough shrugged and accepted it. "You don't get anywhere by screaming and yelling," she said. Besides, she says she has earned between $150,000 and $200,000 a year on eBay, enough to keep homes in Massachusetts and France, and to support an aging father with Alzheimer's disease. "I work part-time for full-time pay," said McDonough.

Others are less sanguine. In addition to technical problems, Josh Shaffer , an eBay seller in Brookville, Pa., pointed to a number of recent cases in which hackers broke into legitimate eBay accounts to run fraudulent online sales. "The respect for sellers is lacking," he said.

EBay has begun a crackdown against rip-off artists -- for instance, putting new restrictions on merchants in China, the source of many counterfeit products.

Still, Shaffer has launched an Internet site to denounce the policies of eBay CEO Whitman -- a site called firemeg.com -- and has begun moving his operations to an independent online store.

Companies such as Amazon.com make it easy for major merchants to leave eBay. "The power sellers can now direct people to their own sites and not pay any eBay fees at all," said Sucharita Mulpuru, senior analyst at Forrester Research in New York. EBay hopes to hang onto its sellers with a storefront of its own. EBay ProStores charges a monthly fee for an Internet retail space that lets the user create a site with a unique look and feel. But ProStores merchants retain access to eBay and can sell the same merchandise simultaneously on both sites.

Shaffer didn't show up for eBay Live, and his bitter attitude is nowhere to be seen at the convention center. Instead, sellers visit booths where entrepreneurs hawk business management software and product-shipping services. And they attend 170 training sessions on the art of running a small online business.

"We get to track their success. They share their stories with us," said Griffith, eBay's merchant education chief. "I wouldn't miss one of these for the world."

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.