I look at Casper Operations from their S1 reports. Casper has a great product but it suffers from the problem of selling a durable good in a competitive market with many vertically differentiated brands. Plus, returns in the DTC channel are a huge problem. That problem is not going away.
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While brick and mortar retail is facing the biggest challenge in years, retail stores as a channel are not going away. The key to running a successful brick and mortar store lies in executing a careful trade-off between high efficiency and high customer experience. An excellent work by an operations colleague Kesavan shows that “treating your employees with stable schedules” does not have to be a trade-off.
Leave a CommentAmazon has tripled its profit margin in 2018. Is this the year investors were waiting for? The year in which Amazon “turns on” the profit faucets? I argue (using the recent news on 1-day delivery) that we will see more reinvestment and continued scaling with thin margins.
Leave a CommentIt was not Amazon that killed Toys ‘R’ Us. This is evident from their debt data, and also by a comparison with Target, which was also collaborating with Amazon then. Private investors chortled Toys ‘R’ Us — without focus on e-commerce efficiency or on customers — sending it south, even as Amazon was hurtling north.
Leave a CommentA post about Tesla’s decision to cut more than 3,000 jobs and scale back on showrooms. Tesla needs showrooms, but not for the often-quoted reason. I argue that after this decision, Tesla should focus on its most-valued customers by improving on their product service bundle.
Leave a CommentHappy Thanksgiving, dear readers! In the modern consumer mythology, Thanksgiving – a uniquely American celebration – is a day for Turkey and Football, usually starring the underwhelming Cowboys who coincide with the decline of the NFL. But, all traditions are fluid in America, as we always welcome and add new changes. Now, there is the dreaded Turkey Drop, where college freshers “drop” their high school sweethearts. There is the much-derided Tofurkey which has become a vegetarian thanksgiving tradition. Even the resistance is upended into tradition. Those naysayers who devotedly, every year, circulate Wednesday Addams videos, proclaiming their iconoclasm, only join and expand the tribes of people who celebrate Thanksgiving in their own way. Because Addams Family — a whimsical thanksgiving movie —…
Leave a CommentIn 2013, a guy who was trying to pitch a company, called DoorBot, that sold security doorbells, went nowhere on Shark Tank, as the sharks rejected his offer. The founder Jamie Siminoff positioned the idea at $7M. Here is the video. Last year, the company was valued at $460M. Last week, the company, now called Ring, was acquired by Amazon for $1B. This is not a post to castigate the poor assessments of Ring’s original business idea: As ideas evolve they get better, and some cosmic confluence of interests can be helpful for a firm. — Ring, at one Billion USD, is a tremendously expensive acquisition for Amazon. In fact, Ring is Amazon’s second-biggest acquisition, after Whole Foods. Similar large…
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