Etsy buys REVERB

[AirCap]

https://venturebeat.com/2019/07/22/etsy-acquires-musical-instrument-marketplace-reverb-for-275-million/

Don't know what it means for my Reverb store.... Hopefully no changes at all.

 

[Verne Bunsen]

Likewise. My reaction to getting that e-mail was, “Aw man, I hope this doesn’t suck...”

 

[Seamas]

I've only really took notice of Reverb in the last two years.
I have purchased two used stomp boxes (one just this past week).
Overall, I generally like it. The website is part of my general web surfing.

 

[BroccoliRob]

I bought a Carbon Copy off Reverb and there were some dead wasps inside the box too. Probably Etsy put them there. Etsy, more like Etseeyalater, jerks.

 

[keeper006]

I read an article about this yesterday. It said that Reverb was created by the owner of Chicago Music Ex. with the sole intent of selling it for profit in the future. Because of this, they have purposely kept fees low and gone above and beyond with customer service to make it attractive. Opinions varied on the future, but the concensus was that fees will slowly go up and customer service down as the new owner will typically try to streamline it to be as profitable as possible.

 

[Verne Bunsen]

I’m no Business Professional, but it seems to me that if it was sufficiently successful/profitable under the current model as to make it attractive for purchase, then maybe it’s a solid formula as-is? I left eBay as a seller when their fee structure became impractical, seems like turning Reverb into another eBay would be kind of self-defeating. But again, I’m no professional, so what do I know.....

 

[bagman67]

If your intent was to keep it running as a going concern, yes.  But if there's anything we can take away from the Gibson bankruptcy, there's business, and then there's business. Often acquisitions are marketed as opportunities to better serve customers, realize efficiencies based on improved distribution access, scale, blabbity blah blah; but often that's smokescreen for the financial engineers taking an organization and pumping a bunch of cash out of it.  The acquisition might be financed with debt taken on by the acquiring company, and that generates fees for investment bankers; and the integration generates fees for the investment bankers; and the stock acquired secretly prior to the announcement of the acquisition is sold at a substantial profit; and the restructuring necessary to continue servicing the debt generates more income for the capitalists; and so on and so forth.  I don't mean to imply that this is actually what's happening with etsy/Reverb; but it would hardly be unheard of if it were to turn out to be the case.