eBay joins Amazon in battle with Wish with launch of an ‘Under $10’ storefront

The popularity of low-cost online deals, like those found on Wish, led Amazon in January to launch an “under $10” selection of products that ship for free. This week, eBay is following suit. The company announced on Thursday a new “under $10” shopping destination of its own, also with the perk of having items ship for free.

The selection includes  fashion, tech, home décor, beauty, fitness gear, and other items, says eBay, and the inventory will rotate on a regular basis.

This is similar to what you’d find in Amazon’s own “under $10” store. However, since its launch, Amazon has added an “under $5” section to it storefront, while eBay’s storefront promotes different categories where products are $5 or less – like t-shirts, rings, socks, sunglasses, necklaces, and headsets – and others that are $3 or less, like phone and tablet cases, chargers, cables, earrings, skin masks and nail art.

The items for sale come from eBay sellers, and are available as “Buy it Now” purchases. You don’t bid, pay for shipping, or get tricked into paying any additional fees.

The launch comes at a time when more e-commerce companies are competing for customers buying low-cost, direct-to-consumer products (often straight from China).

Shopping site Wish has capitalized on this trend with its over 300 million products aimed at thrifty shoppers from thousands of merchants. The app even grew to become the number one shopping app in the U.S. in 2017, by downloads across the App Store and Google Play combined, and was most recently valued at north of $8 billion. Both Amazon and Alibaba reportedly tried to buy Wish, in fact, according to reports from a couple of years ago, but Wish rejected those offers.

Now Amazon is trying to beat Wish at its own game, which has encouraged others, like eBay now, to follow. These low-cost shopping sites also compete with Hollar, an online dollar store of sorts, which is more pleasant to browse than eBay’s outdated-looking website.

Ebay, however, will compete on selection. The company says it has millions of products available for under $10. The new storefront is available at ebay.com/under10.