@rrhoover Happy Thanksgiving. Was browsing these posts and love your comment "Rumors were true!". I just founded a new business with an ex-Jet.com colleague, we where the 1st and 2nd product managers @ Jet. We've love your feedback on it - https://www.producthunt.com/post...
Just looking at a product category (disinfecting wipes), the design tries to distract you from calculating price/unit by drawing your eyes to the savings on any item.
@kylepetz@nivo0o0 I bet so are the winner of their referral contest who got stock in the company:
Eric Martin of York, PA
Kyle Taylor of Saint Petersburg, FL
Collin Morgan of Boise, ID
Andrew Reid of Tampa, FL
Kevin Schlenker of Tampa, FL
Dave Kerpen of Port Washington, NY
James Seijas of Mountain Lakes, NJ
Ken Irwin of Hatboro, PA
Steve Bowers of Charleston, WV
Bogdan Semida of Maplewood, NJ
Wow! What fortune!
The venture from the founder of Diapers.com just launched publicly after a long beta period and countdown. Anyone can now sign-up on the site.
They're also apparently trying to raise at a $3billion valuation.
The site wasn't supposed to launch until today at 6am EST, but it seems to be live slightly early.
@_jacksmith i registered and am browsing around... i have no clue what to buy. amazon knows me way too well and recommends surprisingly well now that I'm experiencing jet.
@taylorhou to be honest, I actually had a similar issue. I haven't bought anything from their site, as their prices weren't crazy cheaper than Amazon and I didn't really know what sort of things I should be buying from them.
their sales targets are ambitious to say the least "Lore says that Jet’s model works when it sells $20 billion in products per year, which it hopes to do by 2020". It will be very interesting to see how things pan out.
@_jacksmith When I got on a couple weeks ago, I saved over $15 on my $35 purchase (I bought a bunch of snack food). When I went to check Amazon's prices on the same items, it turns out I saved over $30. Even though their model is crazy, I really hope it works out for them 'cause that was awesome.
@jeremymaluf interesting. someone needs to build a chrome extension (probably already exists) that lets you compare prices on Jet when you're shopping for products on Amazon.com
@_jacksmith definitely. an immediate product suggestion is price comparisons to the major competitors (ie: amazon and the retailer) - maybe then I would always check jet if I knew what I was going to buy.
I happen to be in the market for furniture and I noticed that most of their sectionals are directly from overstock.com but with o's standard 10-15% coupons... on a $2k purchase, Jet's $45 in savings is no where even close.
we're not even including the 3% extra I get from coming from ebates.com (which jet seems to be mimicking in some fashion with their "jetcash" concept)
no matter... they have the warchest of cash. until 2020!
Hi all. Been using this service since the start of beta. I am a recent suburb (with 2 kids) transplant in a house outside NYC. For my use case, it's a perfect fit. In my mind, Jet replaces Costco/BJ's at comparable prices for household items, and consistently beats Amazon on them.
If you don't need immediate delivery. If you don't want to go to a Wal-Mart/Costco. If you don't need to return things like toilet paper. If you have room to keep 50 rolls of paper towels...these are all good reasons to use jet.com. I don't know about you, but I don't ever want to go to a box store ever again, and clearly Lore, being at Amazon, recognized a use case not being fulfilled. My wife went to Costco once and texted me from the line about how much it sucked. We just don't have time for it.
Now all that being said, I don't know how this scales. Some of those orders came with receipts from the local retailers that fulfilled them. That's their model. Here is an example illustrating that: I bought an item for $5 that was $7 on Amazon. The receipt was from Staples...with their S&H, that price was over $11. Someone paid this. It wasn't me.
I have saved $173 on 5 orders so far, which was nearly all household items, though I even bought drumsticks for $1 less than Amazon as well. I can attest to that savings, as I compared every item to Amazon when shopping. I can't say about Costco or Wal-Mart, because I hope never to have to go to those to see.
However, in the long run, I don't know how this beats Amazon. As long as Amazon sticks with a tech strategy around internet-enabled things and drone delivery and so on, household appliances will know when these things are needed (eventually). I actually really liked the "I need more Tide" button that Amazon introduced, and most people thought it was a prank (is it? I don't know. I'd use that for sure). Brands should love it too...the only way brands can save themselves in this new shopping world is by being right there at the point of need...
One thing is certain: Trips to the store to wait in line will die, and maybe so will all the strip malls and traffic hell around them...eventually. I suppose some people enjoy those experiences. This newly-minted suburban dad does not, and someone has to buy cat litter and toilet paper. This isn't a Brooklyn apartment any more. All I care about is price for this kinda stuff.
@pocius Well, that's why they have a membership fee, they are hoping that will end up covering the cost of the savings. I agree, not sure if it scales, but it will be interesting to watch. Over time, they can supplement with new types of paid offerings.
High five for all the other insiders posting on here. I've also been an insider throughout the entirety of Jet's Beta. Experienced some pretty good savings on Household Supplies and Health/Fitness related purchases specifically. Out of everything I experienced, the one thing I was blown away by was the service. Jet was more personal and human-like than any other company I've ever engaged with. They not only won my heart, though my loyalty. Yes, they are probably going to take some more time to get their recommendations on point. Remember it's Technically Day 1! Excited to follow and be a part of their growth as time goes on!
Really hard to see the win here, but I'm excited to see some competition.
I ran through my purchase history with $AMZN. Out of 10 items, 4 were found on Jet, saving < $10. They clearly have plenty of work to do before those coffers run dry.
I feel like it's a luxury being an $AMZN prime member. I essentially treat it as Target-on-demand. I (or my wife) jump on, buy 1 or 2 items, and I don't think about anything more (I find the items, I don't mess with shipping). Personally, we'd get burned on shipping way too much. For the average Jane, I have my doubts on thinking so much when they need/want stuff.
That said. Somebody needs to keep $AMZN on their toes. This looks like a good one! Good luck folks!
I'm one of the "Jet Insiders" that got access early, and for the most part I'm not too sold on it on a number of fronts. Even with the free trials they offer, in the long run, requiring a membership to make a purchase is an annoying barrier that will be a turnoff to Amazon users and others alike.
Trying to undercut everyone and making money solely on membership fees with a business model that the founder stated won't work until it sells $20 billion a year is questionable at best.
I'm not entirely sure what problem they're trying to solve here. Their prices aren't that much lower than the competition, so if it's a price problem they're trying to solve, they're going to have to do better than that, in which case profitability will be even more difficult.
From my own research/observations, the 3 most important things to buyers are price, trust (in the marketplace itself, in the seller, that they're seeing the best matches for them personally, etc), and effort/time required to accomplish their shopping goals. I'm having a hard time seeing how Jet is a substantial improvement on any of these 3.
Founder of Greentoe here. I've been following Jet for awhile and have to say it's exciting to see another company come in and shake up the e-commerce space. It's a space that's ripe for disruption and clearly they have the capital to do it.
That said, and with the preface that i'm 100% bias, i have to say that what we are doing here at Greentoe seems much more revolutionary to me. I just did some comparing between products we regularly sell and the prices on Jet, we blew them out of the water. It wasn't even close. We are saving people 10-15% off amazon, and the products i looked at had maybe 3% savings compared to amazon. Seems like they are simply passing the affiliate fee onto the customer as savings, similar to Ebates . I think it's going to be hard to get people to change there shopping habits with that little savings.
Maybe this model will work well in the categories of cheaper items (< $100) where logistical improvements and shipping can dramatically change the price of an item, but for the higher ticket items, i'm not seeing it. For those types of items, the only way to get a truly great discount is to get retailers to compete to sell you something. But as I said, I'm bias!
I've been using Jet for about a month (Insider beta invite) - I've probably placed 5 orders. Generally I've found the pricing to be good, better than Amazon. That being said, the pricing model seems excessively complicated - putting 1 item in your cart unlocks additional savings on items that ship from the same location (but no way to really see what they are- you just browse around and random items are 'badged'). Plus discounts for debit card usage /etc. Makes price comparison very difficult, and I suspect will just confuse the less tech-savvy audience.
That being said, my biggest reason to use amazon prime is shipping reliability- if I choose 2 day shipping, it'll be here in 2 days. With Jet, my orders have arrived anywhere from 2- 7 days later (and unless I just missed it, there was nothing indicating how long something would take).
The prices on most of the items I checked are higher than my local Walmart (by several dollars an item).
Plus, it has a $50US yearly fee. That means you'll have to buy quite a bit to see any savings.
@fbara Agreed. I've been part of the beta for a month or so and have been unable to find anything cheaper from Jet worth buying. The hardest things for them to match on Amazon are all the Prime benefits as well as having really killer CX.
Are the smart savings already figured into the price or is that only at checkout? I'm confused. If I can save $13 on a $30 item, why are you showing me the same $30 that Amazon is charging, with a confusing savings marker below it? Otherwise, it seems every price is equal to that of Amazon, and like others have mentioned, I have no idea what to buy.
I've also been one of the early 'insider' users since the early days of Jet. I bought something just to get on their wall, but I very rarely find something priced better on Jet than on Amazon. I'm sure they have a few items here and there, but it looks like they need to substantially build out their supplier base in order to compete on a site wide basis.
As a supplier myself, I'll probably try to get on the site, but I know it's a more onerous task than setting up FBA for Amazon Prime. Jet requires an API, which can be a pain to set up and keep accurate when you have multiple sales channels. Any suggestions for inventory API platforms?
Nice to see Jet finally go live. Here's an interesting WSJ article on how they source some 3d party products ( Hopefully this is sustainable for them) http://www.wsj.com/articles/fren...
I wonder if this is like Lyft a "promotional temporary state" where savings are bigger than they will be once the critical mass is reached. I'm taking the example of Lyft Line that started at $3 for a ride anywhere in SF, and the rest was paid by the company.
I just really hope there's a clever algorithm behing all this and not just VC money compensating for your savings. If that sustains, this is awesome.
Product Hunt