com was currently taken by a gold mining business, so Omidyar reduced it to e, Bay. com. In 1997 the business got $6. 7 million in funding from the endeavor capital firm Standard Capital. The regularly repeated story that e, Bay was founded to help Omidyar's fiance trade Pez candy dispensers was fabricated in 1997 by public relations manager Mary Lou Song to offer the media a human-interest story more enticing than Omidyar's initial vision of a "best market". The Pez dispenser misconception created huge publicity and caused explosive early growth among toy collectors. The leader in the toy classification rapidly became Beanie Babies made by Ty, Inc., the most tough toys to discover in stores.
Nevertheless, it was overwhelmed with unsortable listings, producing an immediate demand for a more efficient online trading system. Beanie Babies rapidly became the dominant item on e, Bay, accounting for 10% of all listings in 1997, as collectors thronged e, Bay's easy to use interface to look for particular Beanie Children. Meg Whitman was hired by the board as e, Bay president and CEO in March 1998. At This Site , the business had 30 staff members, half a million users and incomes of $4. 7 million in the United States. On September 21, 1998, e, Bay went public. In the risk factors area of the yearly report filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in 1998, Omidyar keeps in mind e, Bay's dependence on the ongoing strength of the Beanie Babies market.
50 on the first day of trading. As the company expanded product categories beyond collectibles into nearly any saleable item, company grew quickly. In 2000, e, Bay had 12 million signed up users and a cyberinventory of more than 4. 5 million products on sale on any provided day. In 2001, e, Bay had the biggest userbase of any e-commerce website. In February 2002 the business bought i, Bazar, a similar European auction web site established in 1998, and after that bought Pay, Buddy on October 3, 2002. By early 2008 the business had actually broadened worldwide, counting hundreds of millions of signed up users along with 15,000 staff members and revenues of almost $7.