Ebay's deal with online fashion boutique Spring, a threat to Amazon's fashion dream?

Ebay announcement of a partnership with Spring, an online retailer stocking brands including Chloe, David Yurman and Rag & Bone, comes at a time when e-commerce titan Amazon is strengthening its fashion offering. Is this eBay´s glove to Amazon?

Spring will own a dedicated "storefront" on eBay's site, catering a broad fashion and lifestyle offering for both men and women. It´s worth calling out that the shopping website has raised 100 million dollars in funding since it launched three years ago. Furthermore, although primarily focused on used goods, Ebay claims to that over 80 percent of merchandise sold on the site is new.

Ebay challenges Amazon’s claim over the e-fashion kingdom

This move has been seen by many in the industry a glove´s thrown by eBay at Amazon´s face. The e-commerce giant has been expanding its fashion offering over the past year, rapidly eating market share from established players such as Abercrombie & Fitch or Macy´s in the U.S., but also getting UK retailers nervous with its announcement of taking its own label to the high street.

As a matter of fact, the last link for Amazon´s fashion emporium to come true was launching its own label. Now, its first major own-brand fashion collection for the European market, “Find”, is about to hit the UK high street. As highlighted by the ‘Telegraph’, the 500-piece womenswear collection is the latest attempt to meet the company´s goal of 200 billion dollars of annual sales.

“In terms of Amazon’s fashion offer it has been rather quiet in the UK. Its own-label range has been keenly anticipated,” said recently Adam Cochrane, analyst at UBS. “The question is how they go from selling basic products like books and electronics to fashion, which is a much more emotional purchase,” added Cochrane.

Regardless who wins this dare, fashion suits well both contenders, with Ebay having seen its stock up almost 29 percent for the year so far, while Amazon´s shares have gained 32 percent year to date, according to data analyzed by ‘MarketWatch’. Meantime, the S&P 500 index is up 11.6 percent since January.

Photo:Amazon Find, Amazon Spain Web