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Facing Cash Crunch, Retailer Jet.com Racing to Complete Funding Round

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Re: Facing Cash Crunch, Retailer Jet.com Racing to Complete Funding Round

#41

Post by code4tee »

The company is burning cash like crazy, they totally threw their business plan (to only make money via membership fees) out the window within a few weeks of launching and now they've slashed their originally proposed valuation by 50% in what would seem like a desperate move to get some cash in to keep the fire burning.

All for what? To try and compete with the likes of Amazon and Wall-Mart on price and logistics!?!?! Call me pessimistic, but this looks like its going to end in an expensive train wreck.

Re: Facing Cash Crunch, Retailer Jet.com Racing to Complete Funding Round

#43

Post by dayaz36 »

dikaiosune wrote: post #33
mattmaroon wrote: post #26

Say what you want about Jet in particular but there's a real market opportunity here. Nobody but Amazon has much of a business in the "everything store" category, and Amazon's prices have gotten high. Compare almost anything there to the price at your local Wal-Mart, Target, etc. and there's a significant gap. Significant enough that you could buy it at retail prices, sell it at Amazon prices, ship it from UPS, and s…

I'm curious to see what items this applies to. I buy most things from Amazon, and when I comparison shop the prime shipping usually negates any price difference with other online retailers, and the price is very rarely beat by any in store prices where I live. Anecdotal to be sure, and I stick to items fulfilled by Amazon or direct from Amazon (mostly due to prime), but I see a lot of savings this way. And that doesn…

Actually most stores now do price matches to Amazon (including best buy and target among others), so there is no use for Amazon for me now. I used to go to best buy just to test the equipment before buying on Amazon, now I just show them the Amazon price on my phone and they match it. No shipping fee no waiting and cheaper. I think I'm going to have to try Jet.com now that Amazon is worthless

Re: Facing Cash Crunch, Retailer Jet.com Racing to Complete Funding Round

#44

Post by acchow »

bhouston wrote: post #16

Jet.com is going to flame out so quickly, and fairly predictably as well to a lot of outsiders. I wonder what the Jet.com investors were smoking, must have been some good stuff.

I wonder how they intend to hit profitability by 2020 given how razor thin Amazon's margins are, even while benefitting from economies of scale.

Re: Facing Cash Crunch, Retailer Jet.com Racing to Complete Funding Round

#45

Post by TillE »

sixQuarks wrote: post #39
brk wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of the same things were said about Amazon back in the 90's. I was sure they were going to go down in flames when they moved from selling just books to selling everything... Though to be honest, I don't think Jet is the next Amazon.

No, I remember Amazon well in its early days and it was nothing like Jet. Kozmo is a better comparison

Amazon was a pretty successful bookstore, and then they acquired CDNow and became a pretty successful music shop as well. They weren't selling things for crazy low prices, they were just convenient and had a huge catalog.

By the time they moved to selling everything, it seemed like a stable business.

Re: Facing Cash Crunch, Retailer Jet.com Racing to Complete Funding Round

#46

Post by paulcole »

mattmaroon wrote: post #26

Say what you want about Jet in particular but there's a real market opportunity here. Nobody but Amazon has much of a business in the "everything store" category, and Amazon's prices have gotten high. Compare almost anything there to the price at your local Wal-Mart, Target, etc. and there's a significant gap. Significant enough that you could buy it at retail prices, sell it at Amazon prices, ship it from UPS, and s…

Amazon doesn't want to compete on price. They want to compete on value.

Re: Facing Cash Crunch, Retailer Jet.com Racing to Complete Funding Round

#47

Post by MichaelGG »

dayaz36 wrote: post #43
dikaiosune wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious to see what items this applies to. I buy most things from Amazon, and when I comparison shop the prime shipping usually negates any price difference with other online retailers, and the price is very rarely beat by any in store prices where I live. Anecdotal to be sure, and I stick to items fulfilled by Amazon or direct from Amazon (mostly due to prime), but I see a lot of savings this way. And that doesn…

Actually most stores now do price matches to Amazon (including best buy and target among others), so there is no use for Amazon for me now. I used to go to best buy just to test the equipment before buying on Amazon, now I just show them the Amazon price on my phone and they match it. No shipping fee no waiting and cheaper. I think I'm going to have to try Jet.com now that Amazon is worthless

I guess you're one of the folks that would not pay a premium to simply not deal with ever having to set foot in a Best Buy. Returns? Gotta go to the store. Want a sightly different model (for instance the newer Canon Powershots are a downgrade) - wait for them to get stock. Plus the obnoxiousness of going to those stores.

It's great you like getting out, dealing with retail and advertisements. But I think you aren't representative.

Re: Facing Cash Crunch, Retailer Jet.com Racing to Complete Funding Round

#48

Post by exclusiv »

bhouston wrote: post #16

Jet.com is going to flame out so quickly, and fairly predictably as well to a lot of outsiders. I wonder what the Jet.com investors were smoking, must have been some good stuff.

I agree, but until then check them out. I just got a great deal on a new router. They are the cheapest in many categories and shipping was pretty quick too.

The only thing that could make sense is to lose money on a sale but acquire email and purchase data to resell. Or it could include building a big retargeting ad network for new product launches from CPG and electronics manufacturers. That's what I would do if I could blow money in the ecommerce space.

They could sell data to Facebook if they wanted to in order to improve their purchase based targeting. I'm sure Twitter would love to have purchase info on their users too to make them more relevant as an ad network.

Traditionally manufacturers know very little about most their customers because retailers keep that tight.

So they run coupons, rebates, other incentives and purchase data from cc processors among other things.

So an Amazon that cooperates more with manufacturers and other ad networks could be a decent play.

Re: Facing Cash Crunch, Retailer Jet.com Racing to Complete Funding Round

#49

Post by riking »

wspeirs wrote: post #36
mattmaroon wrote: post #26

Say what you want about Jet in particular but there's a real market opportunity here. Nobody but Amazon has much of a business in the "everything store" category, and Amazon's prices have gotten high. Compare almost anything there to the price at your local Wal-Mart, Target, etc. and there's a significant gap. Significant enough that you could buy it at retail prices, sell it at Amazon prices, ship it from UPS, and s…

> If nothing else we need a solid competitor to keep them honest. I completely agree which is why I've been trying to support Jet by buying "house supplies" through them instead of Amazon. Maybe I'm full of FUD, but I just see a day in the not-too-distant-future where are only option is Amazon.

Looking at the economics, it seems like you're just making them burn cash faster.

Re: Facing Cash Crunch, Retailer Jet.com Racing to Complete Funding Round

#50

Post by umeshunni »

TheBiv wrote: post #37
cs702 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fidelity is not a leading PE firm either.

But they are a market maker probably positioning themselves to be the firm that takes them into an IPO

That's a very long term bet at this point.
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