For the last few days, I have been at the ChannelAdvisor Catalyst conference held in Pinehurst, NC. 
The conference focused on multi-channel e-commerce strategies & brought together top online retailers/sellers, stock analysts, service providers, online marketplaces, comparison shopping and search engines.
As a reminder, ChannelAdvisor is one of our portfolio companies and provides technology that enable industry-leading retailers and manufacturers to sell their products across multiple online marketplaces such as eBay, Amazon.com and Overstock.com, comparison shopping engines such as Shopping.com, Shopzilla, Nextag and Froogle and search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN. ChannelAdvisor helped their customers sell over $1.6 billion in gross merchandise value in '06.
The conference opened with a keynote from Davis Ridley. He ran customer service for Southwest. But just as a sample, some of the other speakers at Catalyst included:
- Bill Cobb, president of eBay North America
- Patrick Byrne, CEO, Overstock.com
- Alex Brutin, Strategic Partner Development, Google
- Alex LePage, Director of Marketing, Toysrus.com and Babiesrus.com
- Anthony Noto, Analyst at Goldman Sachs
- Mike Marston, Co-Founder and VP of E-Commerce, Art.com
- Jeetil Patel, Research Analyst, Deusche Bank
- Trent Schoffield, Director of US Sales, Shopping.com
- Steven Davis, VP of Partner Services, GSI Commerce
- Vince Talbert, VP of Marketing, I4 Commerce (Bill Me Later)
I spent a lot of time with many of the speakers as well as other stock analysts, online retailers/sellers as well as execs from leading search, comparison shopping sites and online marketplaces.
Here are 7 key takeaways from ChannelAdvisor Catalyst:
1 - The event was packed and the mood was definitely very upbeat. 
The rooms were often standing room only. Everyone at ChannelAdvisor did an awesome job putting together this event. It was very polished.
2 - Many online retailers have built businesses to $5 to $20 million+ in revenue almost exclusively using eBay as a channel... and now they're feeling some pain. This is while many of them have ignored further developing out their own web site for direct sales.
These companies are focused on selling things anywhere from car parts to sporting goods to electronics. Unfortunately, many of these companies are operating on thin margins and the dependence on eBay can be painful at times for these businesses and they are feeling squeezed (eBay can change features, raise prices, etc.) Also, I heard several sellers say that they wish they had extra incentives or more favorable pricing on eBay as their sales scale. Despite this critique, other sellers I talked to have been able to make the switch and went from 80% sales on eBay to 20%. And they're monitoring how much of the sales on eBay are actually from first time customers. Which for some it is actually pretty high.
3 - Because of #2, a lot of the messaging around the conference was encouraging sellers to develop a multi-channel strategy and diversify into other channels (direct, search, comparison shopping and other online marketplaces). It was also interesting and good advice when some of the panelists mentioned to sellers that it could be a big advantage to list some of their products on the lesser known comparison shopping engines since exposure could be high with very little competition.
4 - Overstock.com wants to quickly ramp up the selection on their site. Patrick Byrne announced a partnership yesterday between ChannelAdvisor and Overstock where CA would help get more sellers to partner with Overstock .... smart move. 
It was clear that Overstock is very interested in rapidly scaling the amount of products on the site. Patrick said that they view themselves as a search engine on the front end of different supply chains. I didn't know this, but today 68% of the product that is sold on Overstock is actually shipped by partners. On the site, it looks like you are buying from Overstock, but it is actually shipped from a separate seller. Returns & customer service are handled by Overstock. So, they're really expanding this program because Patrick said they are seeing a tremendous amount of unfilled demand and they recognize that partners are doing a better job at sourcing product than Overstock.
By the way, I didn't realize this but 60% of the shoppers on Overstock are female. Interesting stat.
5 - I still don't have a full understanding of how Skype fits into eBay's plans. Bill Cobb, president of eBay talked about "The Power of Three" - eBay, Skype and PayPal. 
And he mentioned there are great synergies, but no detail behind it. I know Skype is growing rapidly, but still scratching my head with the exact fit. But I'm glad he came for Catalyst and he faced some tough questions during the Q&A :)
6 - Google Checkout is here to stay. I spoke with one of the guys from Google yesterday and they had a bunch of people at the conference. They are putting a lot of effort behind Google Checkout and it is definitely helping merchants that use it increase their paid search ranking. Google also references a couple of interesting facts. 1) 63% of carts are abandoned after beginning checkout and 2) internet users have too many accounts. The average internet user has 17 passwords! I had no idea. They are looking to simplify the whole process. For a seller, using Google Checkout seems like a no brainer given the incentives in place and the help with paid search ranking.
7 - It is clear there is a lot of competitive pressure between all the search, comparison shopping & online marketplace companies there. Overstock talks about how they're different than Amazon, etc. They're all fighting for more product to offer greater selection to buyers.
Also, for more on the event, check out Jeetil's report from Deutsche Bank Download channeladvisor_takeaways_032207.pdf . Thanks Jeetil for letting me post this.
