30 Business DECEMBER 2018
feature
M
usicMagpie
became a
household name
after it turned
the business of
reselling old
games and CDs
into an industrial-scale operation.
A decade later, the Stockport-
headquartered company is
shifting focus as it turns
its attention to
consumer tech.
With a decline in
physical media
such as DVDs and
CDs, the popular
reseller is looking
at mobile phones,
tablets and
gadgets.
The fast-growing
mobile phone market
alone pumped out 342m
units during the second
quarter of this year, and it is this
churn of mobile phones that is proving
to be big business for musicMagpie.
Consumer tech now makes up more
than 50% of the business - the most
traded-in phone at musicMagpie is the
iPhone 7 - and the company is the
world’s largest third-party seller on
eBay and Amazon – selling five items
every second!
“We are reinventing ourselves as a
business,” Oliver says. “We have gone
from buying physical media such as
CDs, DVDs, and games, which we have
built our branding and reputation on,
to becoming the leading consumer
technology business in the UK.
“Consumer tech products are now
more than 50% of our turnover, and
within that, the biggest category
is mobile phones.
“But we’re also buying
and reselling games,
consoles laptops and
tablets, iPods, Go
Pros, and Apple
watches.
“It’s a real range
of consumer
technology
products.
“And now that’s
become part of the
USP of the business.
“We’re not just a pure
play CD or mobile phone
recycler, we can do a range of
items.”
But with so many online
marketplaces for consumers to sell
directly, I ask the big question, why
choose musicMagpie?
Oliver tells me: “With consumers
constantly upgrading, they may have
four mobile phones and a tablet lying
around and they might still have a
couple of CDs and DVDs which they
want to get rid off but they don’t have
the time to sell them on anothermarketplace, they don’t want to be
going to the post office with several
different packages and they want their
money immediately.
“We offer them the chance to put
everything into a box and send it to us.
As soon as the items arrive, customers
get paid immediately, and it’s this
immediate approach that is so
attractive to so many people.
“We are, as I’ve described it to many
people over the years, the lazy person’s
eBay.”
But while tech products are in strong
demand, the company still shifts
around 25m CDs, DVDs, and games a
year. Books is a category they are also
seeing an appetite for.
“The book market is a fascinating
one,” says Oliver.
“In the last couple of years, the
market for physical books has gone
back up as people have returned from
their Kindles and ebooks.
“The key message here is that as with
many media products, for consumers it
doesn’t have to be one or the other, you
can do both.
“When my wife goes on holiday,
she’ll put three books in the suitcase
and the Kindle too.
“Given a choice, she will probably
choose a book, but in reality, she does
both. I have got a Spotify account, a
Netflix account, Sky account, but I stillenjoy buying a physical product and
that’s the key element - you can do
both!
“People are always asking if digital is
killing the physical media side of the
business, but in some sense that
market dynamic is what feeds our
business.
“People that have finished with their
physical media products are feeding
products into our business for those
people who are still buying it.”
Oliver launched the business with
pal Walter Gleeson from his garage in
2007 – and the first item they sold was a
copy of Abba’s album Gold.
The pair, who had both worked in the
music industry for many years, got the
idea for the online site after realising
there was a huge demand for hard to
find novels and music.
They decided that the model of a
‘modern stock exchange’ could be
applied to collectible music, DVDs,
books and consumer technology –
which they saw was a source of
untapped wealth after the recession left
many people looking for a fast and easy
way to sell their old items for cash.
Today the business employs 750
people, exports to 140 countries
around the world and boasts an annual
turnover of over £100m. It also became
the first business in the world to get
more than five million positive reviewsTech trade
boosting
Magpie’s
business
MusicMagpie, the world’s biggest reseller of
physical media and consumer tech, is
aiming to dominate the US market. Shelina
Begum caught up with co-founder and CEO
Steve Oliver at their new headquarters in
Stockport Exchange
MusicMagpie’s CEO
Steve OliverWe are, as I’ve
described it to many
people over the years,
the lazy person’s eBaySteve Oliver