Ebay purchases online marketplace Bureau of Trade

The purchase could signal a change for eBay in how it chooses to market its products

Only a few days after buying mobile payments platform Braintree for $800 million, eBay is at it again.

This time the e-commerce site has purchased online marketplace Bureau of Trade, it was announced via a blog post on Friday. Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

Michael Phillips Moskowitz, the founder of Bureau of Trade, will be joining the eBay Marketplaces team, it was revealed.

"This year, eBay enhanced its homepage and unveiled a more personal way to shop the site. To continue this focus on tailored shopping experiences, Moskowitz will be helping eBay’s 120 million active users (as of June 30, 2013) discover items that match their individual tastes and preferences," eBay wrote.

Menlo Park, California-based Bureau of Trade launched in beta in February of last year. The idea behind the e-commerce site specifically, which catered to men aged 28 to 45, was to go beyond simply describing the item but to bring out what was unique about it. That meant adding a media component that helped tell the story of the items it sold.

For example, it gave the history of the designer and the company that is selling, and told users how the item had been used in the past. The company also incorporated video, text and live events to help push the narrative.

It will be interesting to see how eBay goes about incorporating Moskowitz, and his vision, at eBay. It seems to signal a new direction for how the company will try to market its goods, but what that will look like it anybody's guess right now. 

“As an influential tastemaker, Michael is perfectly poised to further eBay’s mission of connecting shoppers to the things they need and love,” says Richelle Parham, Chief Marketing Officer for eBay North America, said in a statement. 

Oddly, there is no indication of the purchase on Bureau of Trade's website. VatorNews has reached out to Bureau of Trade for more information. We will update if we learn more. 

In its short history, the company raised $1.2 million in seed funding from Foundation Capital, with contributions from Founder Collective, Courtney Holt on behalf of TechFellows Fund, and select angels.

As I said before, this has been a busy week for eBay, making two big purchases in a short amount of time.

Earlier this week the company announced that it bought Braintree, to make it a part of PayPal.

For PayPal, tjhe purchase is a way for them to strengthen its position in mobile. The company will be leveraging Braintree's Venmo, a mobile app that lets people send to and receive money from their friends. How the service will be integrated into PayPal is not yet clear, however.

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