Mayor Nancy Vaughan officially welcomed the eBay team and the participating business owners to the eBay Retail Revival kickoff at Revolution Mill on Wednesday, March 27.

Greensboro was picked by eBay for the third Retail Revival program in the US.  The first two were Akron, Ohio and Lansing, Michigan both launched in 2018.  The tagline for Retail Revival is “Stay Local, Sell Global.”  The 75 Greensboro businesses that were chosen to participate will receive an intensive year long program on how to best use eBay to market their products worldwide and it’s a service eBay is providing at no cost.  If enthusiasm and expertise can help a small business, then these 75 businesses should be experiencing some real growth in the coming year.

Since the announcement on Feb. 6 that Greensboro had been chosen the eBay team has been accepting and analyzing applications.  They received about 200 applications for 75 spots, so it was a competitive process and one thing the eBay team was looking for were the businesses that could benefit the most from the Retail Revival program.

eBay’s Alexis Gallivan told the group, “We read every single word of your applications.”

Gallivan later said that they would have liked to accepted more businesses into the program but by keeping the group small they could offer more intensive support.  She said that with a larger group eBay wouldn’t be able to provide the one-on-one coaching that those involved in Retail Revival are going to receive during the next year.

She said that the businesses chosen “essentially get an eBay business plan.”

The eBay folks didn’t put it this way, but it sounds like what the 75 business owners involved in Retail Revival are going to get is a masters degree in eBay marketing taught by the folks who know the most about it, eBay marketers.

Retail Revival is designed to help local entrepreneurs take advantage of the massive reach of eBay with over 179 million active buyers in 190 markets that accounted for $95 billion in sales in 2018.

The presentation on Wednesday also emphasized the charitable contributions that eBay makes and the involvement in the community.