Recently the German Retail Association (HDE) and eBay held an event in Berlin bringing together stakeholders from the retail industry, associations, politics, academics and media to talk about the success of eBay's SMB initiatives in the cities of Mönchengladbach Diepholz, enabling small retailers to grow their businesses online. Among the panelists were members of German Parliament Dieter Janecek and Hansjörg Durz, retail scientist Prof. Dr. Gerrit Heinemann, Stefan Genth of the HDE and Stefan Wenzel of eBay.

The keynote was held by Dirk Wiese, Parliamentary State Secretary in the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy. In his presentation, Stefan Wenzel showed preliminary results of the Diepholz project: 30 local merchants generated 175,000 EUR in a few months and shipped items to 16 countries. Because of the success of the two pilots, Stefan Wenzel announced the creation of a “Digital City Hub” to bring a larger number of cities onto the eBay marketplace.