eBay UK - Keep on moving

Nouman Qureshi, category manager of toys & games at eBay UK, tells Clare Turner why he believes the ecommerce pioneer could help boost beleaguered bricks-and-mortar retail

Nouman Qureshi

Eighteen months ago, ecommerce giant eBay UK promoted Nouman Qureshi to the newly created post of category manager, toys & games. He is responsible for the category growth and oversees both seller and brand performance. “Toys and games in its entirety sits underneath me,” he explains. “So I’m the point of contact for some of the larger brands and retailers on our platform - and I’m responsible for helping them grow.

“Aside from that, my job is to make sure that we have the right inventory selection at the best prices for our customers, and that they have a varied selection to shop from. It’s also incredibly important to me to maximise our support of small businesses.”

Since the government announced a national lockdown, Nouman has, unsurprisingly, been very busy. “With the UK being told to stay at home, we’ve obviously seen a real surge in sales of toys and games and the category is understandably performing extremely well,” he says. “That’s being driven by great small businesses as well as household name retailers that have joined the site, such as The Entertainer, Early Learning Centre and Hamleys.

“People are looking for entertainment, so there’s been a sustained increase in demand for the ‘classics’ in the category.” He cites the examples of card game Top Trumps and board games such as Scrabble and Monopoly. “I can see the appeal for families wanting to get away from the screen after days of virtual homeschooling and homeworking,” he says. “But we’ve also seen jigsaws and colouring taking off among adults because of the trend towards mindfulness.

“And chess sets have been flying off the virtual shelves, with sales up 216% since the release of [US drama miniseries] The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix. Looking at the toy industry for the past five years, entertainment releases have always been a massive driver for the market. We obviously saw a lot of box office films being delayed [because of the pandemic], especially ones that would perhaps cause a surge in demand for toys. But the likes of Netflix - and the TV series and films they release - have been a driver for a lot of searches.”

With schools closed and parents looking to keep their children occupied, eBay has noticed a massive uplift in shoppers searching for products such as kids’ activity books (up 352% year-on-year) and kids’ arts and craft sets (up 155% year-on-year).

Nouman adds: “Interestingly, kids’ chalkboards are up 100% year-on-year. When we went into the first lockdown, people were buying chalk - perhaps to keep kids amused (by decorating the pavement, for instance). But the rise of chalkboards now is probably more related to supporting teaching and learning.” In the first five weeks of 2021, brands such as LEGO, Playmobil and Play-Doh were up 36%, 16% and 57% respectively in searches. Newer toy trends are proving popular too, such as slimes, which are up 23% year-on-year.

Nouman’s role is specific to the UK market but eBay is a multinational business with operations in 32 countries. So have any toys and games trends caught his eye from other regions of the world? “It’s interesting to see cult fan favourites such as Pokémon cards still trending in eBay markets - the US and Australia especially,” he says. “I think the pandemic has certainly inspired a revisit to the toys of the past, [tapping into] childhood nostalgia, which can be played at home - and I think UK retailers know that. But in the broader sense, the UK toy market remains incredibly advanced and I think other markets can look to it for inspiration.”

He says he has been impressed by the resilience and agility of independent toy stores. “A lot of bricks-and-mortar retailers took the plunge onto the eBay platform in 2020. Take Toy Barnhaus: they have eight bricks-and-mortar stores that were forced to close, and the founders Mark [Buschhaus] and Stephen [Barnes] decided to take their shops online through eBay to keep their business moving. It has really paid off; they shipped more than 150 parcels in their first weekend. The way businesses like Toy Barnhaus and others have adapted so quickly is inspiring.

“New sellers like Mark and Stephen will be well equipped to maintain eBay as an additional revenue stream long after the pandemic. I caught up with them recently and they are really pleased with how eBay has allowed them to stay afloat. They saw their online sales take over their historical bricks-and-mortar sales at key moments like Christmas.”

So if a business is thinking of following in Toy Barnhaus’ footsteps and exploring this online channel for the first time, how should they go about it? Nouman explains: “eBay is a platform that benefits both big and small businesses and the great thing is that you can literally just register and start listing in minutes. There isn’t a set of criteria at the initial entry level and for retailers, having an online presence is a way of future-proofing their business. It can act as the perfect complement to bricks and mortar. It’s also a great way for bigger brands to open up a new channel to ship excess stock, which is a problem that we see is very apparent now, given that shops stopped trading in November and December.

“Ecommerce gives customers more choice: they are able to browse through a wider array of product pieces, and for small and medium sized businesses, eBay is a place where anyone can make a business out of anything. We saw a huge jump of 355% in the number of individuals that set up an eBay business in general at the end of the first lockdown in June 2020.”

There is a vast array of resources and tools available at sellercentre.ebay.co.uk to help businesses set up an account on the site. A seller protection team also works behind the scenes to make eBay a fair and safe marketplace.

“Keeping our users safe is our priority,” says Nouman. “We have global safety teams on call around the clock to help safeguard eBay and the 1.3 billion listings that are live at any given time. We enforce a product safety policy which uses a block filter algorithm that prevents unsafe products from being listed. It blocks such listings from making it onto the site, and last year those filters blocked six million listings on product safety grounds alone.

“We have close relationships with regulators and authorities including Trading Standards and the BTHA and if any of them inform us that a product is dangerous, we immediately ban it on all our marketplaces globally. Collaboration with these organisations is so important, because toy safety is a massive concern for people in the toy space and for eBay as well.”

The company also invests in initiatives to deal with fake and counterfeit products. For example, its Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) programme allows owners of intellectual property [IP] rights and their authorised representatives to report eBay listings that may infringe on those rights.

And, says Nouman, “if we receive a report of a dangerous counterfeit listing, it is investigated immediately. We have fraud investigation teams that support law enforcement agencies and prosecute those trying to sell counterfeit goods. So we are working closely with our partners and taking all the action within our sphere of control to make eBay an even safer marketplace to shop.”