eBay's Impact on Your Car

We’ve all heard stories of hardships of those from generations past. Poverty, famine, and lawlessness ran rampant while our ancestors struggled to survive these brutally harsh conditions. As awful of an analogy as that may be, I too can look back to see the difficulties that today’s generation will thankfully never have to face. My life has and always will revolve around cars; and my lifelong love affair with gasoline and horsepower shows no end in sight.

Aero styling always held show rather than go and I was fortunate to be at the forefront of the body kit revolution when it finally became popular culture in the late 90s. My calling came when I purchased my first Veilside body kit. From there it was nothing but more fiberglass and less speed bumps.

a special place in my heart. I admit; I’ve always swayed towards

Like most, I dove into the body kit industry head first selling body kits by the tonnage. Shelves emptied faster than they could be stocked. A few select companies imported the merchandise stateside, while others managed to carve out their livelihoods and retailers, wholesalers, and other various third parties. And for a while, the industry thrived. People were prosperous, careers blossomed, and everyone’s cars started to look really good.     

Not too long thereafter, the guiding hands of commerce lead consumers away from brick and mortar stores along with their middlemen in the form of eBay. Suddenly prices plummeted and sales soared as traditional stores were replaced with eBay stores. Industry standards were slow to adjust, thus pricing structures were severely lacking. Coupled with no rent, and little to no overhead costs this meant that anyone with a computer and industry connections can take part in commerce reserved for those previously confined to commercial spaces. One after another companies fell, losing ground to the digital era and the eBay revolution.

Fast forward a half decade or so and we find ourselves in today’s plateaued market. Sales on eBay remain strong while certain websites round out the majority of sales. Traditional motorsports stores have given way and most have mainly changed roots into the performance minded territory and/or service. Where a customer would have typically gone to a store for a special order (as most stores did not stock body kits for logistical reasons), body kits, wings, and hoods are now either a click or a bid away. Over all this netted bigger savings for consumers and larger profits for manufacturers. A necessary evil at the cost of the middle man? Perhaps. But in the end it seems all is well in the marketplace. One can only hope that cost and market stabilization is followed by quality and build standardization as well.