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Want to harness the original social action? ThredUP capitalizes on customer emails

Eliza Kern — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 20:00:38 +0000

Plenty of companies talk about how to harness the power of social to engage customers and sell more products, and these days, they’re usually referring to growth on sites like Pinterest, Twitter, Tumblr, or Instagram. But what about the original social tech — email?

ThredUp, the company that’s working on e-commerce and collaborative consumption for children’s clothing, noticed that a large amount of site traffic was coming from users who were getting links to products directly over email from friends. So the company decided to capitalize on this trend of parents emailing links to each other, and begin allowing them to reserve items specifically for a friend, putting that item on hold until the other person can take a look.

“The more time I spent talking to users and watching people browse the site, the more I heard people were saying, ‘Oh this is so cute, my friend would love this for her daughter,’” said Josh Yang, the product manager for ThredUp who spearheaded the project. “And I feel like this happens on a lot of e-commerce sites, where you like something and you send it over to a friend.”

The move to capitalize on how their customers are using the site comes as companies like ThredUp work to build their brand image without traditional brick and mortar stores or showrooms, something other companies have tried with ideas like flexible return policies or limited high-end wares. But email promotions are still a significant part of retail traffic, so it will be interesting to see if ThredUp customers take advantage of the option — the company said that in the beta test, consumers who tried it reserved more than 3 items on average.

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With new CTO, One Kings Lane goes all in on mobile

Ki Mae Heussner — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 18:49:59 +0000

Plenty of startups know that mobile needs to be their next frontier, but One Kings Lane CEO Doug Mack is particularly bullish about his company’s opportunity on the emerging platform. That’s because mobile revenue, which has been growing at a rapid pace, now accounts for a quarter of the company’s total revenue — and the company is just beginning to deploy its latest weapon for attacking mobile: newly-appointed CTO Jean Sini, who recently ran engineering for Mint.com.

While at Mint, Sini watched as 40 percent of the service’s user base went mobile-only. Using his data aggregation and engineering chops, Sini was responsible for serving up an experience that maximized every user experience. Mack said that in hiring Sini, the company is “all in” on mobile and he hopes Sini can translate that experience for One Kings Lane.

One Kings Lane CEO Doug Mack

“We believe in the opportunity that we can own mobile commerce and be one of the stars of the mobile web,” said Mack, adding that “Jean has a stronger vision for mobile than anyone I’ve met.”

Going forward, Mack and Sini said they’ll put a premium on relevant, personalized content, as well as on an uncluttered, fast-as-possible experience. Other feature possibilities might include using the smartphone camera in creative ways to help users search. They also said mobile could also help inform the web experience as it can teach companies to be minimalist and disciplined without sacrificing function.

One Kings Lane, which was launched by fashion executive Susan Feldman and Alison Pincus (wife of Zynga founder and CEO Mark Pincus) as a home decor flash sale site in 2009, is on track to double revenue to $200 million this year. In July, the company said 25 percent of its revenue came from mobile, up from 22 percent in June.

Average order values for mobile were also higher in July, with the average iPad order beating desktop by 10 percent and iPhone order topping desktop by 6 percent.

Mobile commerce is still a fraction of the total e-commerce market in the U.S. – 8 percent according to Kleiner Perkins’ Mary Meeker. But it’s growing at a very fast clip. This year, eMarketer estimates that mobile commerce sales will rise 73.1 percent to $11.6 billion.

Other new e-commerce sites, such as Etsy and Fab have also reported strong growth on mobile. In May, six months after launching its iPhone app, Etsy said 20 percent of its users were coming in through mobile and, around the same time, Fab said 22 to 25 percent of weekly sales were from mobile customers.

In looking at mobile, Sini said it’s all about taking advantage of “interstitial time.”

“We live in the Twitter era,” he said, explaining that people take little bursts of free time here and there to check news, send messages and make purchases.

“We need to grab five minutes and make the most of it,” he added.

One Kings Lane Chief Product and Technology Officer Jean Sini

Aside from focusing on mobile, Mack said one of the company’s macro goals is surpassing Pottery Barn as the most visited premium home site, which it expects to do at some point next year.

In addition to adding Sini to the company’s management team, One King’s Lane recently hired VP of brand development Sascha Jamall, previously with Michaels (the arts and crafts stores) and Pottery Barn; VP of legal and general counsel Susan Stick, previously with Skype; and chief people officer John K. Anderson, previously with Quidsi.

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LuxeYard puts a social spin on high-end flash sales

Colleen Taylor — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 05:01:38 +0000

LuxeYard, a members-only e-commerce website that sells discounted high-end furniture and home decor products, is launching Tuesday to users in the United States and Canada. Yes, it’s technically another flash sales site. But what’s interesting about LuxeYard is that it’s doing things a bit differently from the established players in the space such as One Kings Lane and Gilt Groupe.

Crowdsourcing the inventory selection

Firstly, rather than populating its site with objects selected by a group of buyers operating autonomously based on their own taste, LuxeYard is taking cues from its users on what items to sell. LuxeYard members can post photos of the type of items they’d like to buy on social media platforms, and other members can vote up on products they would also like to buy. Essentially, the items for sale on site will be crowdsourced according to users’ wants.

LuxeYard screenshot (click to enlarge)

“We’re really establishing a pattern of listening,” LuxeYard COO Steve Beauregard said in a phone interview Monday. “We’re really trying to build a conversation around certain pieces, and that will help focus our buyers and attune them to our users’ tastes, rather than just buying something they think is interesting.”

Taking group buying one step further

Secondly, LuxeYard is employing truly flexible group buying. This is where members use their social networks to encourage their friends to buy the same product on LuxeYard they’re buying, thereby driving down the price of that item. For example: I could buy a chair on LuxeYard for $150, and then post about that chair on Facebook. If a certain number of other people end up buying the same chair, the final cost for everyone buying the chair could be driven down to $100.

A unique financial starting point

And another unique thing about LuxeYard is that it’s hitting the ground running from a financial perspective. The company has raised $3.5 million from private investors, but has technically already gone public by conducting a reverse merger into a publicly-held shell company. Details are still being ironed out, so there is no public float to LuxeYard’s stock, but it will begin trading under the ticker symbol “LXRD” at some point in the coming months. Access to public market investors will potentially give LuxeYard the monetary wherewithal to compete head-to-head in the flash sales and group buying space already filled with solid players such as Wayfair, One Kings Lane and others, not to mention more general e-commerce sites such as Amazon.

But how long can exclusivity last?

Now, LuxeYard also claims it will be more choosy about the items it selects to sell on the site. According to Beauregard, if a company’s products are already being sold on existing e-commerce sites or major chain stores, LuxeYard will not sell any of its products. That’s an honorable goal, but true exclusivity is not always an easy thing to maintain when you’re also balancing the demand from investors for constant growth. And being that LuxeYard is starting out as a public company with notoriously demanding Wall Street-style investors, that could be an even harder balance to strike. But overall, LuxeYard’s offering seems unique enough that the company has a good shot at success — even in the hyper competitive world of e-commerce.

Here’s one more screenshot of LuxeYard (click to enlarge):

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Why the next front in big data might be psychological

Derrick Harris — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 16:01:18 +0000

Big data is often talked about as a phenomenon that lets organizations create narratives from their volumes of data. That is an apt characterization when we are talking about connecting the dots among disparate and possibly disconnected data sets. However, when we are talking about anything involving human beings — customer behavior, the spread of disease, attitudes toward products or people — all that many current analytical efforts deliver is the end of the book, or what happened. The end is a fine place to start with regard to big data, but working backward — that is, figuring out why people made the decisions they made — might prove even more valuable for everyone involved.

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Study: Apple’s iPhone, iPad account for 90 percent of mobile purchases

Darrell Etherington — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 16:09:41 +0000

If people are buying through mobile online retail site, they’re most likely doing so on Apple devices, according to a new report this week from retail analysis firm RichRelevance. iPads and iPhones accounted for over 92 percent of online retail sales not originating from a desktop device occurring in December, according to the study.

That’s up from 88 percent the last time RichRelevance in April, and it easily beat out Android and other competing mobile platforms. Shoppers on Apple devices were also willing to spend more, with an average order value of $123 vs. Android’s $101, and $87 from those shopping from traditional desktop operating systems. RichRelevance used data from 3.4 billion online shopping sessions between April and December at U.S. retailers ranging from specialty stores to major e-commerce sites.

Mobile shopping is still a relative drop in the bucket compared to its desktop companion, with just 3.74 percent of total online retail dollars spent in the U.S., but that number is growing. Thanks in large part to the success of Apple devices, mobile web shopping has doubled in eight months, and RichRelevance CEO David Selinger says the trend will only accelerate. Key to being a part of that growth for retailers, Selinger suggests, is “ensuring a seamless experience across the interplay of device, context and consumer behavior.”

Mobile devices seem to be most used for shopping at times when users don’t necessarily have immediate access to other types of computing hardware. For example, RichRelevance found that during Thanksgiving, 24 percent of shoppers visiting retail websites were on mobile devices, the highest share between November and December. On weekends traffic spikes, too, up to 17 percent from an average of 14 percent during the period measured.

If there’s any key takeaway here for Apple’s competition, it’s that the browsing experience is key to mobile commerce. Apple’s iPhone still offers the most true-to-web rendering of non-mobile websites of any smartphone, in my opinion, which means that even if online retailers are slow to tailor their experience to small screens, shoppers can still have a relatively painless shopping experience. It might also just be the case that the demographics of Apple mobile device buyers inclines them toward mobile shopping anyway, since they tend to have a lot of disposable income and be more responsive to advertising.

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Amazon launches pet e-commerce site Wag.com

Colleen Taylor — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 12:00:08 +0000

The team behind Diapers.com has made a new e-commerce site aimed at the other baby in the American household: the family pet.

Quidsi, which is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon.com, is announcing Wednesday the launch of Wag.com, an e-commerce site selling pet-related products. Quidsi also runs Diapers.com, Soap.com, and BeautyBar.com.

Don’t be fooled by the name — Wag.com’s offerings will go way beyond dog treats, marketing director Earl Gordon and site leader David Zhang told me in an interview this week. The site will launch with more than 10,000 products for dogs, cats, birds, fish, reptiles and other small animals. The offerings will include mass and specialty branded food, litter, toys, vitamins and medicine, grooming supplies, clothing and accessories.

Quidsi was acquired by Amazon in November 2010, but the company has stayed at its original New Jersey headquarters and continues to be run as an independent subsidiary, Gordon and Zhang told me. However, Quidsi has taken on an attitude that befits a major corporation in at least one way: It divulges very little about its internal development. Zhang and Gordon declined to answer questions about exactly how long Quidsi had been actively working on the Wag.com site. But they did say that Quidsi’s customers have been asking the company to develop a pet supply site since Diapers.com launched in 2005, and once Wag.com’s development started, the team quickly saw similarities between the two sites. “When we started, we realized almost every category on Diapers.com has an allegory on Wag.com,” Zhang said. “It’s so amazing to see the parallels between these two businesses.”

Like all of Quidsi’s sites, Wag.com will only be available to shoppers within the United States. The company promises its orders will be delivered within 1-2 days, with free shipping on orders over $49 — and no surcharges or exclusions for heavy or bulky items–a plus when buying those 30-pound bags of food for Fido.

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