{"id":25889,"date":"2023-01-16T19:37:39","date_gmt":"2023-01-16T15:37:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeyet.com\/?p=25889"},"modified":"2023-01-16T19:37:39","modified_gmt":"2023-01-16T15:37:39","slug":"murray-lambell-of-ebay-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeyet.com\/murray-lambell-of-ebay-uk\/","title":{"rendered":"Murray Lambell of eBay UK"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The online retail giant\u2019s boss is on a mission to make employee inclusivity a \u2018moral obligation\u2019 and to help his company adapt to a difficult post-pandemic marketplace<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

hen corporate executives start discussing their efforts to influence company culture, a healthy amount of scepticism is advisable. But Murray Lambell, the UK boss of US online retail giant eBay, can draw on personal experience of the importance of how a business cares for staff. For many years he hid his sexuality from colleagues in a culture that was \u201cmore stifled and stuffy internally\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was probably my own baggage,\u201d he says. \u201cI was not comfortable to be out at work \u2026 A lot of the leadership was white, middle-aged, from a very specific demographic and academic background, which didn\u2019t all resonate with me. I didn\u2019t feel comfortable to be a complete person at work and then that limits you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what emboldened him? Until now, Lambell has been speaking briskly, beneath vivid images from graphic designer Alba Bl\u00e1zquez in the bright surroundings of eBay\u2019s UK headquarters in west London. He takes a deep breath, visibly emotional. \u201cI was married and my partner died. I had to come into work for the first time and tell my boss: \u2018Oh, by the way I\u2019m gay and my partner is actually in hospital right now.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was thinking: \u2018I shouldn\u2019t be dealing with this issue right now, when I\u2019m trying to deal with an existential crisis.\u2019 I was having to deal with too many things in one go. I realised there was probably nothing to be fearful of.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lambell says his bosses at the time, in 2014, were \u201chorrified\u201d that he hadn\u2019t felt comfortable discussing his sexuality earlier and the experience has emboldened him to treat employee inclusivity as a \u201cmoral obligation\u201d. (The board is now more diverse and he\u2019s taking a Yale University course on the subject.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

CV<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Age <\/strong>46<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Family <\/strong>He has a partner, Robin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Education<\/strong> BA in French and history at Exeter University and master of business administration at London Business School.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pay<\/strong> Undisclosed. \u201cMore than I ever expected to earn, less than you might think.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last holiday <\/strong>Elie in Fife, Scotland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Best advice he\u2019s been given<\/strong> \u201cDeliver, deliver, deliver,\u201d from the former eBay chief customer officer Wendy Jones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phrase he overuses <\/strong>\u201cHistory doesn\u2019t predict the outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How he relaxes<\/strong> Other than running \u2013 \u201cTo show my 25-year-old
nephew who is fastest\u201d \u2013 he is trying to learn new languages. \u201cCurrently doing well at Spanish and OK at Farsi!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not that eBay\u2019s recent culture has been beyond reproach. Last week two former executives in the US were jailed for their part in a harassment campaign against a couple who published a newsletter critical of the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Five other employees, who have also all since left, pleaded guilty for their roles in the bizarre scheme, which included sending live cockroaches, a funeral wreath and books about surviving the loss of a spouse to the couple\u2019s home. \u201cThat\u2019s not something I recognise about our business and what we represent,\u201d Lambell says, speaking before the sentencing, but adds that there is \u201cstill work to do\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We meet as eBay faces two tumultuous global headwinds: the brutal sell-off of US tech stocks and the impact of a protracted cost of living crisis on discretionary spending. Both require the Californian company to draw on the resilience that enabled it to create the first big online marketplace and sustain it for 27 years while its web 1.0 peers crumbled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not that its UK home in a cobbled square beside the Thames in well-to-do Richmond recalls Silicon Valley. A lonely-looking table-football unit is the only nod to tech work culture, and each meeting room has a pointedly British name and theme (we sit in Bond, a silhouette of 007 etched into the glass).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The stock sell-off has proved painful for eBay. The pandemic shift to online buying pushed shares to all-time highs above $80 last October but they have since fallen by 46% as restrictions have eased, valuing it at just over $20bn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In August it reported that gross merchandise volume \u2013 the value of all the goods it sold \u2013 fell for the fifth consecutive quarter, down 18% at $18.6bn. Active buyers were down 12%, to a still respectable 138 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lambell is unshaken: \u201cThis is a long-term play. So the pandemic [drove a different] category mix \u2013 we\u2019ve now got economic pressures. Supply chains are going to have to adapt to move. Consumers will want to buy things on a trusted, reliable platform and we provide that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

We\u2019ve had two years of utter disruption \u2013 people are still going to splurge at Christmas but I think they\u2019re being a lot more planned about it<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

He admits some categories such as home and garden products \u201care going through a total hangover\u201d after a pandemic boom. Meanwhile, discounted and refurbished goods are selling well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So should we expect squeezed Britons to seek a secondhand Christmas? \u201cWe\u2019ve had two years of utter disruption \u2013 people are still going to splurge but I think they\u2019re being a lot more planned about it. They will prepare and split their spend over months.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lambell\u2019s job is also to encourage and promote sellers of products that \u201chit the zeitgeist\u201d, such as heavily searched solar panels and air fryers during the energy crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That hunt for the next trend led eBay to acquire Manchester-based non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace KnownOrigin in the summer. Lambell says the deal brings \u201cour web 1.0 with this web 3.0 world together\u201d. He envisages eBay\u2019s army of collectors photographing their sought-after treasures \u2013 such as artworks \u2013 and selling NFTs of them. \u201cClearly the market has a long way to evolve \u2013 it\u2019s very early days.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of Lambell\u2019s strategy is to convince high-end fashion brands to list ex-display and imperfect stock instead of ditching or, previously, burning unwanted items to avoid devaluing the product. \u201cFor years, eBay was seen as the pariah of those brands. They hated the fact that their stuff was being resold \u2026 and you saw [that] type of awful behaviour,\u201d he says, adding that conversations are now at \u201cvaried levels of maturity\u201d with brands looking to sell off their inventories in carefully curated parts of his site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company\u2019s high-end business has also grown through its authentication service, launched last year for watches, handbags and trainers,which has seen it physically handle products in warehouses for the first time. Growing consumer concerns about waste should drive sellers and buyers to eBay, he adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lambell\u2019s own recent eBay search history points to his early career \u2013 a former Swissair drinks trolley he spotted on a recent trip to Switzerland sent him down an online rabbit hole, reliving his postgraduate years with British Airways. He left his corporate role at the airline after witnessing strike action that caused passenger fury in Heathrow\u2019s Terminal 4. \u201cIt was almost a riot,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Canterbury native\u2019s worldview has also been shaped by his parents\u2019 struggles in the latter days of running their transportation business. \u201cIt was very emotional watching what they went through \u2013 these big partners were basically putting so much pressure on them in terms of cost that they couldn\u2019t deliver the service they were proud to deliver.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does he keep that in mind when dealing with thousands of small firms? \u201cYeah, [although] I\u2019d never say that with the businesses directly. I think they would say: \u2018That sounds like spin.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you are a writer then you can\u00a0write for us<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The online retail giant\u2019s boss is on a mission to make employee inclusivity a \u2018moral obligation\u2019 and to help his company adapt to a difficult post-pandemic marketplace hen corporate executives start discussing their efforts to influence company culture, a healthy amount of scepticism is advisable. But Murray Lambell, the UK boss of US online retail […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25922,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[475],"tags":[1745,10,4075,4076,473,17],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-25889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-united-kingdom","tag-employee","tag-featured","tag-moral-obligation","tag-murray-lambell-of-ebay-uk","tag-news","tag-top"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeyet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeyet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeyet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeyet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeyet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeyet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeyet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeyet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeyet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeyet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25889"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeyet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=25889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}