Exclusive: eBay starts daily deals for services, taking on Groupon

EBay Inc has quietly launched an online marketplace for deals on local services, taking on Groupon Inc and expanding into a potentially big category.

Called eBay Lifestyle Deals, the offers are being run in a limited number of urban areas, including the San Francisco Bay area, Los Angeles and Washington D.C.

Recent deals included $12 for a one-hour dog-walking service worth $25; $50 for a month of Yoga classes worth $110; and $180 for six private gym sessions worth $360.

The move is potentially a big step for eBay, which has traditionally focused on products rather than services.

"We have a big marketplace and a lot of people who come to eBay don't just come for one thing - they stay and buy across categories," said Devin Wenig, president of eBay Marketplaces.

"It makes perfect sense to experiment with new categories, and services is one of these things. We're seeing whether deals and services are attractive to our customers."

EBay has teamed up with start-up Signpost, which arranges the deals with local merchants and posts them on a new section of eBay's online marketplace, www.ebay.com/exp/lifestyle-deals.

Signpost, backed by Google Ventures, already provides deals for Google Offers, a rival to Groupon.

EBay plans to add more daily deal providers if the effort goes well.

"Signpost is a merchant, just like merchants selling physical goods on eBay," Wenig said. "A merchant may sell local or even global services on eBay in the future."

BIA/Kelsey, which tracks the local media industry, expects U.S. consumer spending for online deals to reach $5.5 billion by 2016, up from $1.8 billion last year. That includes daily deals, and other discounted online sales channels, such as product deals and flash sales.

Groupon Chief Executive Andrew Mason has estimated the total local-commerce market is worth $3 trillion.

EBay has run daily deals on physical products for about two years, but this is its first foray into discounted services in the United States.

Groupon started the daily deal craze in late 2008 and quickly grew into a company with thousands of employees and well over $1 billion in annual revenue.

That growth attracted a lot of deep-pocketed rivals, such as Google Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Facebook Inc. However, growth has slowed recently as consumers tired of endless deals from multiple providers. Facebook shelved its first effort in the market last year.

Groupon shares have lost about three-quarters of their value since the company went public last year.

However, Google and Amazon have stuck with their daily deal businesses.

EBay shares rose 0.5 percent to $46.45 on Nasdaq at midday.

(Reporting by Alistair Barr; Additional reporting by Phil Wahba in New York; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)