Some experienced businesspeople see eBay as a growth opportunity in an otherwise slack economy. In 2003, Sven Asböck and Frank Hoffmann, who had worked for a mail-order company that went bankrupt, launched DTG Dynamic-Trade in Neumünster, an hour north of Hamburg. The business snatches up all sorts of surplus merchandise, then sells the stuff on eBay. Sales have doubled every year, to $6 million in 2005, and the company employs 22 full-time workers. "We sell everything you can imagine," says Asböck. No kidding: Current offerings include bedroom sets, toasters, and telescopic rifle sights.

The business of supporting German e-merchants has also grown into a thriving industry. More package deliveries are generated by eBay for Deutsche Post and its DHL unit than the biggest catalog retailers. One customer is Bielefeld-based SE.LL Marketing, which helps customers such as toy train maker Brio unload excess merchandise on eBay. SE.LL rarely even sees the goods it auctions off, having outsourced the warehousing, packing, and shipping to DHL. "We want to focus on services. Fulfillment is not our core business," says SE.LL co-founder Christof Sander, 29, a former manager at German media company Bertelsmann.

In Rabenkirchen, eBay -- combined with the easy availability of logistics services and software -- has created a hotbed of e-commerce. For two decades Otto coached basketball, track, and other sports at municipal sports clubs and ran a ski shop on the side. But then the financially strapped local government cut his hours in half, and a recession devastated his shop's sales. In 2002, when son Jan, then 17, asked for money for driving lessons, Norbert told him he would have to earn it by selling off some of the ski shop's excess inventory. The skis sold quickly on eBay -- at twice their wholesale price.

Soon Jan found himself behind the wheel of a battered blue cargo van, ferrying Chinese-made parkas and plastic sleds from the port of Rotterdam. Sport Otto began hiring staff, using part-timers to avoid paying health and pension contributions that can nearly equal an employee's take-home pay. The fledgling company also took over a cluster of small buildings in Rabenkirchen that had been vacant ever since the former tenant, a construction company, shut down.

BUYING A BENZ 

At first glance, the Ottos don't appear to run an especially tight ship. Swim goggles, baseball bats, and mosquito nets are arranged haphazardly on wooden shelves. Yet every item is bar-coded and scanned. From a desk equipped with two flat screens and littered with wholesale sporting goods catalogs, Jan knows when to redeploy snowboarding trousers from the barn to the packing shed. As customers bid, software tallies the average price and profit on each sale.

The business hasn't made the Ottos rich. Their one luxury is a Mercedes-Benz SUV. Jan lives in the same building used to pack orders, while Norbert occupies a modest apartment above Sport Otto's offices. Both start work at 7 a.m. and often don't finish until late in the evening. They dream of building a modern, computer-driven warehouse and buying products directly from Asian suppliers. For now, Norbert says, "we're investing everything back into the business." Spoken like a true entrepreneur.