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Walmart says it will discontinue Jet

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Re: Walmart says it will discontinue Jet

#121

Post by zachware »

vsskanth wrote: post #60

Story time! When Jet.com launched they had some promos going on so I wanted to check out what it was all about and ordered a bunch of stuff. I think at that point they had 2 day shipping over 25 without a membership. Their signature purple package arrives on time, in a larger than expected box. I open it, and there's a smaller Amazon box inside. I open THAT and it has all my items. I got two receipts, one from jet.co…

This reminds me of when I sent a friend a case of Topo Chico from Jet. He'd never had it.

The package (of heavy bottles of water) shipped next day and each bottle was meticulously wrapped in mesh paper. You could have stuffed a mattress with all the wrapping.

All for $1.99/bottle and free overnight shipping....

Re: Walmart says it will discontinue Jet

#122

Post by unclebucknasty »

ckocagil wrote: post #98
dahfizz wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, hundreds of millions Americans do. It's one of the strongest brands in the world.

Millions (billions?) trust Facebook too. Yet, Facebook kept the Instagram brand and it paid off.

Different situation. Facebook and Instagram are social brands that signal which demo you'll find on each platform (at least at the time of acquisition).

Instagram's branding/demo was a big part of what FB was after.

Re: Walmart says it will discontinue Jet

#123

Post by manojlds »

vsskanth wrote: post #60

Story time! When Jet.com launched they had some promos going on so I wanted to check out what it was all about and ordered a bunch of stuff. I think at that point they had 2 day shipping over 25 without a membership. Their signature purple package arrives on time, in a larger than expected box. I open it, and there's a smaller Amazon box inside. I open THAT and it has all my items. I got two receipts, one from jet.co…

Reminds a bit of Theranos too.

Re: Walmart says it will discontinue Jet

#124

Post by vsdvvsderer »

bigiain wrote: post #80
vsdvvsderer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

huhuhu, what happens when I tell Walmart I've completed the deliveries, but I haven't? what happens when I make the delivery, but someone gets injured in the process? DoorDash has insurance for this most likely.

How much would you bet against DoorDash's "insurance" being the small print on page 78 of the T&Cs when you sign up to be Dasher including something along the lines of "You, as and independent contractor partner, certify that you carry all appropriate insurance and accept responsibility for any claims arising from your delivery operations."???

ahahahahahah probably yes. doordash has some cool lawyers that can defend that. but mom's delivery company gets the full force of the law

Re: Walmart says it will discontinue Jet

#126

Post by ryanianian »

archeantus wrote: post #76

I’ve always looked at the Jet deal as $3b to get their CEO Marc Lore to get in there and fix their e-commerce operations. If you look at the online sales performance since Lore joined, as well as the stock price (it has more than doubled), I think $3b was a good deal.

At the time of the takeover, Jet was doing pretty innovative tech while walmart had a very terrible ecommerce offering. Jet used to have this thing where they would offer you live-calculated discounts on items that were in the same FC as items already in your cart since those items would cost them less to ship. It was kinda gimmicky, but it sure was a cool tech demo. I strongly believe that Jet was a longer-term acquihire, and this kinda confirms that.

Aside: Jet's HQ is in my hometown. I considered interviewing there after a coworker went there, but being bought by walmart really soured me on it. Stodgy company that strongly discourages things like alcohol in the office. Fine, I don't need to drink at work, but weird. I hope they're able to transfer Jet's good tech branding and hiring pipeline to "walmart labs" or whatever they're rebranding jet's org as.

Re: Walmart says it will discontinue Jet

#127

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

Terretta wrote: post #77
MangoCoffee wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it seem like a waste not to continue the jet.com. its a simple domain that is easy to remember.

see also: buy.com -> rakuten // no amount of branding awareness tv ads are fixing the name recognition they lost with that one... still redirects though.

However, I have never heard of buy.com, but I have heard of rakuten!

Re: Walmart says it will discontinue Jet

#128

Post by billme »

scarface74 wrote: post #64
coldpie wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Browsing Wikipedia briefly, Techcrunch has been owned by AOL since 2010; AOL was acquired by Verizon in 2015; Yahoo! was purchased by Verizon in 2016; AOL was merged with Yahoo! to become Oath in 2016, and I believe all of the above mentioned subdivisions are now circling Verizon's toilet. They're just trying to find ways to monetize before the flush happens. If you're going to die anyway, why not make a few bucks se…

Acquisitions are bad, folks Only two YCombinator companies have ever gone public. The rest of the companies “exited” by either dying or being acquired. I doubt many of them are chugging along as profitable “lifestyle business” without having a goal of being acquired.

Curious, which two YC companies went public?

Re: Walmart says it will discontinue Jet

#129

Post by josefresco »

cptskippy wrote: post #101
robotnixon wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Snapper is the sort of high-quality nameplate, like Levi Strauss, that Wal-Mart hopes can ultimately make it more Target-like. He suggested that Snapper find a lower-cost contract manufacturer. He suggested producing a separate, lesser-quality line with the Snapper nameplate just for Wal-Mart. Just like Levi did." https://www.fastcompany.com/54763/man-who-said-no-wal-mart

The book "The United States of Walmart" goes into how Walmart pressures manufacturers to lower price points, margins, outsource, etc to meet the price Walmart wants to sell their products at. They have done significant damage to once reputable brands like Levis and Huffy in the interest of having that premium brand in their stores. For much of the 90s and early 2000s offshoring of manufacturing in the US was primaril…

Maybe this is a result of what you describe but I never remember Levis or Huffy being premium brands. Before Walmart "came to our town" those brands were featured in other big-box stores.

Re: Walmart says it will discontinue Jet

#130

Post by j-c-hewitt »

erikig wrote: post #115
vsskanth wrote: post #60

Story time! When Jet.com launched they had some promos going on so I wanted to check out what it was all about and ordered a bunch of stuff. I think at that point they had 2 day shipping over 25 without a membership. Their signature purple package arrives on time, in a larger than expected box. I open it, and there's a smaller Amazon box inside. I open THAT and it has all my items. I got two receipts, one from jet.co…

I can see how this would happen. When working in inventory and fulfillment we'd often see our competitors price their goods below our wholesale. Sometimes it was because of the manufacturer incentives, other times because the product was a loss leader and was used as a promo. Either way, it seems that Jet.com was able to leverage this and use the Amazon pricing to keep their client happy. Fair play to all involved.

A lot of services weight unit velocity highly in determining product search ranking and other ranking methods that involve pay per click advertising. This creates some incentives to under-price for extended periods of time.
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