Archive for eCommerce – Page 4

Craig Newmark- Craigslist

Posted by Joseph Colosimo 
· Monday, September 16th, 2019 
· 5 Comments

As a newcomer to to San Francisco in 1995, Craig Newmark started an email chain to advertise events to local software and internet developers.  Word of mouth quickly led to rapid growth, with more people subscribing to the chain.  Newmark was surprised when people started this as a platform for hiring and job placement.  Members started asking for a website version, so Newmark registered “Craigslist” and it became a live website in 1996.  Newmark realized that the site was growing quickly, so he quit his job and committed full time to Craigslist.  By 2000, he had nine employees working out of his apartment.  The site was still limited to San Francisco, but Newmark and new CEO Jim Buckmaster wanted to expand.  Five years later, Craigslist expanded to 31 more cities around the US.  A $25 dollar charge for job postings was implemented, which brought in much needed funds to the company.  Since then, Craigslist has added countless categories and specializes in personal selling of items.

Presently, the site serves more than 20 billion views per month, making it the leading classified service in the US.  As far as jobs, Craigslist receives more than 2 million job listings per month.  With a service this large, one might be surprised that they only have 50 employees.  Ebay purchased a portion of Craigslist, while Newmark is still believed to be the majority owner.  Net income is estimated around 500 million. Newmark never intended the site to be a huge money-maker, but just a marketplace helpful to the people.

I was very impressed learning about Newmark and how he took something small and revolutionized it.  As an entrepreneur, you might think you have a good idea, and then customers make it even better. In this case, Newmark was content about his email chain being used for job postings, until others came along and started using it for something different. Being adaptable and open-minded is critical for success, and Craig Newmark is the perfect example.

5 Comments
Categories : eCommerce, Uncategorized

Warby Parker: A New Way to Look at a Problem

Posted by Stu Rozendal 
· Monday, September 16th, 2019 
· 3 Comments

Nine years ago, Jeffrey Raider, Andrew Hunt, Neil Blumenthal, and David Gilboa founded a company called Warby Parker, a company which they hoped would address the need for eyeglasses in a different way.

A simple issue that eyeglass customers often face is a cosmetic one: they do not know if they will like the eyeglasses they purchase, or if the glasses will look good on them. When trying on glasses at the eye doctor, or at an eyeglass store, it can be hard to tell what the glasses will look like when you where them out. It can also be hard to even know where to start with glasses. There are so many options but a customer does not always know what will look good on him or her.

Warby Parker wanted to address those issues. What if there was a company that allowed you to try on the glasses before you had to commit to them? What if the company helped you figure out what glasses would look best on your face? The Warby Parker business model was born. The company is primarily an online business, doing most of its business through its website. The website in its current iteration begins with a short quiz of sorts that asks the customer various questions from face shape to their preferred material of glasses. From there it will give the customer a series of suggested eyeglasses and from that list, the customer can select five different eyeglasses that they would like to try on. A few days later in the mail they will receive a box in the mail. This box will contain those five eyeglasses, and they have a week to try the eyeglasses on and then return them.

This model allows the customer to get a feel for the glasses, to decide if they like the look, the feel, and the function of each pair. There is no pressure to make a quick decision with Warby Parker, unlike at an eyeglass store. Customers are encouraged to take their time before committing to a pair.

Though Warby Parker is primarily online, they have begun to recently add some brick-and-mortar stores, with these popping up in the United States and in Canada, though they still strive to adhere to the same business methods.

The founders of Warby Parker did not want to simply create a business that helped people with figuring out which pair of glasses to wear. Though this is an important niche and they have found a smart way of addressing it, they wanted to add something deeper to their business: an element of social entrepreneurship–entrepreneurship that gives back. With that, they began this model: for every pair of glasses sold, they would donate a pair to a company that distributes eyeglasses in developing countries to encourage forward-thinking for individuals and startups there. This way they would not just be giving something away in the form of charity, but they are empowering individuals by providing certain resources (eyeglasses and reading glasses) that promote an individual towards autonomy and self-direction.

Warby Parker is a good example of a business that saw a problem–in their case, an insufficient method of trying on and fitting eyeglasses–and established a new and thoughtful solution. They are also a good example of then taking that new business model and making it into something that gives back to communities in need, in a way that does not harm these communities more.

3 Comments
Categories : Apparel/Accessories, Creating, eCommerce, Manufacturing, Millennial Enrepreneuers, Redemptive Entrepreneurship, Social Entrepreneur, Websites

Chewy: Changing the Way We Shop for Our Pets

Posted by Michael Moosa 
· Sunday, September 15th, 2019 
· 5 Comments

In 2011, Entrepreneur Ryan Cohen was shopping at his local pet shop when he suddenly had an epiphany. The pet shop owner had always known Cohen and his pet by name, and Cohen realized that he had always trusted the owner. Why couldn’t Cohen bring the same level of care and trust he felt from his local pet shop to millions of pet-lovers? Cohen then decided, along with his friend Michael Day, to set out and create what would become the largest e-commerce pet business in the world.

After the failure of Pets.com in 2000 following the dot.com bubble, there was no real player in the online pet industry that consumers felt they could go to for convenience. Of course, companies like Amazon had come to offer millions of pet products online, but could not replicate the level of service that consumers typically experience when they go to their local pet store. Cohen realized there was a perfect opportunity to create a business where pet owners could take care of their pets without ever leaving their homes.

Chewy was founded on convenience and customer service. Cohen became obsessed with customer service, and wanted his customers to feel as if they were actually at a pet store when they went to shop online. Some ways that Chewy sets itself apart from competitors include: sending customers handwritten holiday cards, sketches of their pets, and flowers when their animals pass away. Additionally, a 24-hour customer service line promises to answer any call within six seconds. As for convenience, Chewy also revolutionized the pet industry by bringing a subscription based model to the e-commerce company, which accounts for almost two-thirds of revenue. Customers can set up instant reorders of pet foods, medicines or supplies that they use on a regular basis.

While Chewy has endured immense success unseen before in the pet industry, the company faced many challenges in its early days. In an interview with Inc. Magazine, Cohen talks about Chewy’s humble beginnings: “I couldn’t fund the business for the first few years,” Cohen says, noting that more than 100 investors passed on the opportunity. “And they were right. We were going head-to-head against Amazon, there was Pets.com–we know how that worked out–and selling 30-pound bags of pet food and shipping it across the country isn’t the highest-margin business.” Chewy also started in Florida, hundreds of miles away from Silicon valley, not the most ideal place for a startup looking to raise capital.

What inspires me most about Cohen is his perseverance and love for the pet industry. Despite the many challenges he faced when starting Chewy, Cohen continued to focus on his customers, and his business model. Cohen is among America’s richest young entrepreneurs thanks in part to Chewy’s listing on the NYSE in 2019, which valued the company at $8.7 billion. The company became so successful that is was acquired by Petsmart in 2017 in what was called “the largest e-commerce acquisition in history.” This success shows how important it is for entrepreneurs to take risk, and truly invest 100% of their time and resources in a business they want to grow. Cohen never backed down from his competitors, and proved that hard work and dedication will eventually pay off.

Sources:

https://www.inc.com/emily-canal/petsmart-acquires-chewy.html

 

5 Comments
Categories : Blog, eCommerce, Pets

Stitch Fix’s Katrina Lake: Reinventing the Fashion Industry

Posted by Emma O'Toole 
· Saturday, September 14th, 2019 
· 3 Comments

Like most entrepreneurs, Katrina Lake never saw herself as an entrepreneur or starting her own company. Katrina Lake is the founder and CEO of Stitch Fix, and is now one of the wealthiest female entrepreneurs in the country.

After graduating from Stanford University studying economics and pre-med, Katrina worked at a consulting firm, focusing on retail and hospitality, which had yet to reach the digital revolution era. She realized that consumers found buying clothes online difficult because they had to go through millions of options available and pinpoint exactly which item they liked and would work for them. Katrina took this to heart and really thought how she could ease online shopping for consumers. Consumers are mainly concerned about style and fit of their clothes. After consulting and working as a venture capitalist, Katrina wanted to work for a company that would be the future for retail, but she realized that it did not exist anywhere as no one successfully merged fashion with data usage. So in 2009, she attended Harvard Business School to pursue a master’s degree in entrepreneurship.

For a class project at Harvard Business School, she used her findings from her consulting job with the troubles consumers had buying clothes online. Katrina desired to bring a better shopping experience into homes of women who did not have time to shop around or have access to a wide range of fashion options. She felt that shopping was broken, and at the time, e-commerce was not an ideal way to shop. So she asked herself what consumers really wanted out of retail, and came up with a personalized shopping service that uses algorithms and recommendations from stylists to curate boxes of clothing and accessories that matches a customer’s style and fit preferences.

For a small fee, customers would receive semi regular shipments based on their size, tastes, and information pulled from social media accounts like Instagram and Pinterest. What they want to keep, they are charged for, and what they do not like, they could return. This would combine the personal shopping tips she got from her sister and a Netflix style e-commerce model. This is when Stitch Fix was created.

Stitch Fix officially launched in 2011, and has experienced significant growth with 2.7 million customers and more than $1 billion in revenue.  Katrina Lake was named number 55 on Forbes list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women. Today, Stitch Fix employs around 85 data scientists and more than 3,700 stylists. They have expanded their collection lines to not only women’s clothing, but men’s, kids, maternity, petite, plus size, and basics.

Through hard-work and innovation, Katrina Lake revolutionized the fashion industry through Stitch Fix. She was able to find a gap in online shopping and provide consumers with an easier and more convenient way to shop. Katrina introduced the market to personalized styling to the average customer, not just to the rich. Stitch Fix is reinventing the apparel industry and the way customers buy their clothes.

 

Find out how Stitch Fix started

 

 

3 Comments
Categories : Apparel/Accessories, eCommerce, Fashion, Millennial Enrepreneuers, Uncategorized, Women Entrepreneurs

Patrick and John Collison – Stripe

Posted by warricknj18 
· Monday, December 10th, 2018 
· 1 Comment

How did two brothers who grew up in rural Ireland come to be some of the youngest self-made billionaires and have what could be one of the most important internet companies in the world? Patrick and John Collison were very smart from a young age. They learned to code by age ten, and loved reading. They started a few businesses early on, including one called Auctomatic, which helped sellers on eBay. It ended up selling for $5 million in 2008, when Patrick and John were 19 and 17 respectively. They both attended prestigious universities, Patrick went to MIT and John went to Harvard, but they both ended up dropping out of college and had the idea for Stripe in 2009.

Before this time, there was not really an easy way for money to be transferred over the internet. PayPal was around, but the process still had a large amount of improvement to be made. Patrick and John saw an opportunity for a better payment transaction system on the web. Stripe gives businesses seven lines of code to paste into their website, then they are able to accept payments easily.

Soon after starting Stripe in San Francisco, they ironically received investment money from PayPal founders Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, as well as Sequoia Capital and other investors. They also received money and guidance early on from Y Combinator – a famous startup accelerator in San Francisco, as well as CapitalG – Alphabet, or Google’s investment company later on. In 2016, Stripe received a $9.2 billion valuation making the brothers both billionaires, and in September 2018 they received a $20 billion valuation. They still have a lot of work to do before reaching that valuation, but it shows the large potential of the company.

Stripe has also connected with some huge clients. Companies like Facebook, Lyft, Shopify, Spotify, and SquareSpace all use Stripe to process their payments. They even have started working with Amazon on some of their transactions. Stripe now has millions of businesses using its platform, and handles billions of dollars in transactions per year. Chances are that half of the transactions a person makes online are through Stripe, whether they know it or not.

Patrick and John are constantly thinking about how to improve the lives of people around the world. In 2016 they started a platform called Atlas that helped international startups with incorporating in United States. They also love to read and be outside. Runs and other activities with their Stripe team members happen often.

Stripe is impacting millions of people and businesses in how money is transferred over the internet, and in many other ways. It will be exciting to watch the company as they grow in the future and impact millions more.

1 Comment
Categories : App, Business, Droupout, eCommerce, Technology

Jake Nickell – Threadless

Posted by warricknj18 
· Friday, December 7th, 2018 
· 2 Comments

In 2000, Jake Nickell started a thread on the forum website Dreamless, where artists could submit t-shirt designs to share with the rest of the thread. The best few designs were then chosen, and Jake printed them out and sold them. The artists who won received a few free shirts for their contribution. All of the money Jake made from shirt sales was put directly back into printing new shirts. His reason for this project was not making money, it was his passion for design and the art community. He did not even really think about it becoming a real business at first. After this first round, Jake built a website to sell the shirts on, and eventually moved everything to the site when he saw a possibility for a business. He called it Threadless, a spin-off of the name Dreamless. The basic structure was, and still is, that artists submit designs, and each week they are voted upon by the site users. Then the best are printed out and sold. Artists receive money and a Threadless gift card for winning.

Soon after, Jake dropped out of art school to focus on Threadless. During the first few years, Jake was constantly designing new websites and rolling them out to get feedback on them. They would sometimes totally change the Threadless website four times a year. Jake is an artist and a coder, so he had fun working on this, and still does to this day. In 2004, Threadless made $1.5 million in profit, and in 2006 they hit $6.5 million. Then in 2008, Inc. estimated $30 million in sales at a 30% profit ($9 million in profit), and also named Threadless as The Most Innovative Company in America and placed them on the front cover of their magazine.

Threadless utilizes two big tools with their business model – crowdsourcing and co-creation. This means that the customers create and promote the products being sold, which is part of the reason they are so successful. It gets artists involved in what they love to do. They also have a chance to make money from it, so they will go promote it to their friends, which keeps growing the business. Threadless was actually around before the term crowdsourcing came into being, but it was quickly connected with the company.

Threadless also does very well at connecting with their customers and artists. Employees sometimes text the artists, and constantly communicate with them and ask about their experience.

Threadless is truly an innovative company that has become very successful. What has made them successful is their (at the time) unique business model, and their passion, especially Jake’s passion, for the artist community.

2 Comments
Categories : Apparel/Accessories, Clothing, Creating, eCommerce, Online Companies

Should We Go?

Posted by smithJG18 
· Thursday, November 29th, 2018 
· 1 Comment

Elise Hennigan took a huge risk and left her high up position in a startup to pursue her own idea. She found inspiration in her dog, Emmet, because of how kind and loving he is. “Dogs light people up. They bring out this love and passion in people, and they connect us to each other. I started Should We Go? to honor this idea,” Hennigan says. Rather than jumping into the market with her own assumption of what would sell, she instead conducted research on Amazon. Figuring out which products were well liked and which ones were not, Elise constructed her idea: a hands-free dog leash. While she knew this was a great niche market idea, she also knew that these products already existed, so she did more research. After looking through the reviews of the existing product, she decided to switch up her design to solve these problems.

 

Elise says,“Everyone else is using the same criteria for product launches, so you really, truly need to think outside of the box. Like so many things in life, you should be aware of the rules so you can break them thoughtfully and with intention.” This type of innovative thinking perfectly exhibits a great entrepreneur: figuring out what everyone else is doing wrong and counteract it. With this incredible entrepreneurial mindset, Hennigan was able to branch out her brand by creating unique, handmade dog bowls on Etsy. With a company like Should We Go? there is now way to go except up. 

 

By analyzing the market rather than assuming what people want, Elise Hennigan shows her brilliance in understanding that marketing (and selling) is “Finding out what people want and giving it to them” (as Dr. Powell wisely says). I look forward to seeing more products flow from this lucrative company. Good luck Elise!

Image result for elise hennigan

1 Comment
Categories : Dogs, eCommerce, Great Ideas

Good Mythical Morning!

Posted by smithJG18 
· Wednesday, November 28th, 2018 
· 4 Comments

Rhett and Link are a huge YouTube sensation today with thousands of dedicated followers and their own merchandise. This comedic duo has been together since first grade and still remain the best of friends now. What started out as their own website in 2005, Rhett and Link made hilarious videos, usually satirical songs that had perfect harmony and humor. However, when YouTube started, their videos became more viewed. In 2007, the duo gained over 800,000 views in just a few months (a feat that is extremely impressive, considering that this was the really early days of YouTube). This video, The Facebook Song, proved to be their most popular video (now at 17 million views today). In addition to them being one of the first viral videos, they also are one of the few channels that has been around for the entirety of YouTube’s life. Another part of their lucrative business is their daily show, Good Mythical Morning, which is a 20 minute long morning talk show filled with crazy food taste tests and lots of competitions.

 

What makes Rhett and Link such amazing millennial entrepreneurs is their dedication to their customers, and their desire to keep being creative with their skits. Additionally, they have found a way to create something they love and that pays the bills for them and their families. With that in mind, they also have gained a large fan base, giving them the ability to sell merchandise and write books (both of which fly off the internet shelves). All through the process, they remain humble about their success. With their success, they promise to increase their humor and quality, both of which have definitely improved. Rhett and Link truly are national treasures and deserve recognition for all of their hard work. With classic (and mostly clean) humor, they are a joy to watch and laugh at.

4 Comments
Categories : Creating, eCommerce, Film, Music, Online Companies, Social Media, YouTube

Power of Influencers

Posted by beidelmanra1 
· Monday, November 5th, 2018 
· 2 Comments

Amanda Thomas of Luv AJ, founded the beloved jewelry and accessory company Luv AJ. Much of her success has come from her ability to use influencers like Beyonce, Gigi Hadid, and Emily Ratajkowski. Being a millennial, Amanda was able to work the forefront and power of influencers on social media and these influencers followers.

Amanda has an eye of design and aesthetics she utilized Instagram to reflect her brand. Close up shots of her products with links to purchase is how she started and continues to run a successful eCommerce shop. Next, she moved to contacting and sending free jewelry to famous individuals who then would post about the product. So even without individuals being familiar with the brand Luv AJ, the millions of individuals who follow Beyonce for example would soon be familiar with the products that Luv AJ has to offer and be able to also purchase the product or products that Beyonce was wearing.

This influencer market has spread to 200 girls with a range of followers that each season are gifted jewelry in exchange for a post and a tag to Luv AJ’s page. Every post gives them access to a new audience and all owes Luv AJ to get in front of millions of Instagram users and potential customers.

2 Comments
Categories : Apparel/Accessories, eCommerce, Women Entrepreneurs

A Young Success

Posted by Eric Dudgeon 
· Sunday, November 4th, 2018 
· 4 Comments

An entrepreneur who has achieved high levels of success at an early age is Ricky Gutierrez. He was born on January 2, 1995 in Arizona. As a kid, he sold all kinds of small items to his friends and peers at school, which inspired Ricky’s gravitation to entrepreneurship. He attended Arizona State University for entrepreneurship and technology management. By the age of 20, he bought his own house. Ricky founded the company TechBud Solutions, which is a peer to peer groups that is designed to help motivated individuals stay connected and allows them to assist each other with their endeavors. He has also gained a large YouTube following of nearly 400k subscribers over the course of several years. This is where he shares advice about his expertise on penny stock investing, real estate, and even cryptocurrency. Ricky is a prime example that major success does not have to come later in life.

4 Comments
Categories : Business, Content Entrepreneurs, Creating, eCommerce, Millennial Entrepreneurs, Services, Social Media, Technology, YouTube
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