y***r
发帖数: 16594 | 1 后面我就不转了，概括一下说吧，就是跟我们班上神医一样搞法，去bj，cost买了，然
后卖。刚开始一年都不赚钱。亏了1个m打出个名声来。
It is good to be the chief executive of a company that's about to ship 500
million diapers in a single year. For one thing, you get to drive a golf
cart as fast as you want in your new 1,250,000-square-foot warehouse.
"Hang on!" says Marc Lore, putting the hammer down.
The golf cart leaps forward, racing through 10-foot-tall canyons of diapers
stacked on pallets. At 25 miles an hour, the diaper mountains blur by, here
a pyramid of Huggies Little Snugglers with pocketed back waistbands, there a
tower of Pampers Swaddlers Sensitive economy size packs. Skyscrapers of
Enfamil, Similac, and Luvs Ultra Clean Wipes flash past.
"You could put about 20 football fields in this place," says Lore, CEO of
Quidsi, the parent company of Diapers.com' the Internet service that by year
's end is expected to ship Diaper No. 500 million. Next to Lore, in the
passenger seat, is Vinit Bharara, co-founder and COO. Lore and Bharara, both
39, have been friends since grammar school in New Jersey. Also on board is
Scott Hilton, Quidsi's executive vice-president for operations, who designed
the warehouse, which is in Gouldsboro, Pa. The place is a third of a mile
long; the way Lore drives his cart, it takes him about a minute to travel
its length. High overhead, motion-activated lights flicker to life as he
speeds along, leaving a sky trail behind as they zoom past the walls of
diapers.
Lore can go almost anywhere he wants inside the warehouse. He can duck
through its 53 aisles of supplies with about 50,000 different products. He
can slip by its loading docks, where trucks are being stuffed with packages
destined for 20 states. (The company also has warehouses in Reno, Nev., and
Kansas City, Mo.) But there is one place Lore cannot go. He cannot go where
the robots are. The warehouse features about 260 robots, working in a 200,
000-sq.-ft. expanse delimited by bright yellow paint and filled with square
racks of shelving. They are short, orange, rectangular machines that lift
and deliver the shelf pallets to human "pickers" at stations around the
perimeter. They move in balletic formation, dancing like the magic
broomsticks in Fantasia, sometimes stopping and swiveling in place to change
direction. They wait patiently for a column of their peers to pass or make
orderly lines in front of the packing stations before dropping off their
loads. Each robot weighs about 800 pounds and can lift 3,000 lbs. of
merchandise.
"They have sensors and they're supposed to stop if they see you," says
Hilton. "But it's better to stay out of their way. They're very quiet, and
you don't hear them coming."
So Lore avoids robot territory, driving down another canyon and pulling up
to a door in a dark corner. Beyond it is an equally impressive space,
another 400,000 sq. ft. yet to be used. "Room for growth," says Lore,
letting the sheer size of the space do most of the talking. It is easy to
understand the message here, and in everything Quidsi does. To survive as a
commodity-based retailer you need ridiculous, giddy-making scale—because no
matter what you're selling, if you're selling online, you are always,
always at war with Amazon.
Lore and Bharara did about $180 million in revenue in 2009 and expect to
bring in about $300 million in 2010. Just five years old, Quidsi (the name
means "what if?" in Latin) is already breaking even in a category that wasn'
t supposed to work on the internet: Quickly shipping bulky, low-margin
commodities. The partners don't make money on diapers, and never planned to.
Diapers are the draw that brings in loyal customers who order over and over
. The money comes when a shopper throws in one of the other 25,000 SKUs, or
Stock Keeping Units, that Diapers.com lists on its site—higher-margin items
like brand-name baby shampoo, wipes, and formula. (Soap.com, just
introduced, adds another 25,000 SKUs. Lore and Bharara want to have well
over 100,000 by the end of next year; they're planning to get into toys, too
.) According to the partners, their customers are "sticky," ordering again
and again and telling other parents about the service.
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Reader Discussion | y***r
发帖数: 16594 | 2 They are also a surprisingly valuable demographic; many are mothers who don'
t have time to drive over to Costco because they're working and will spend
money to save time.
The company started out as 1800diapers.com. Before going live in January
2005, Lore and Bharara spent three years planning and perfecting an easy-to-
use site that looked like an enormous, professional operation. Their first
customer service department and warehouse, however, were anything but. The
entire staff consisted of Gina DePaola, now 38, a college friend of Lore's.
The warehouse was her garage in Center Moriches on Long Island. Lore and
Bharara tried to get Procter & Gamble to deliver Pampers to DePaola's home,
but they were told that P&G didn't sell wholesale to businesses that were
less than two years old, much less to homemakers' garages. "It kind of made
for a chicken-and-egg problem," says Lore.
Unable to buy from the major manufacturers, Lore and Bharara forged a
practical solution. When an order came into the website, DePaola would run
down to the local BJ's Wholesale Club in her minivan to pick up diapers.
Then she would ship them out. Orders started to come in almost as soon as
the site went live. By the end of the first week, she was shipping 20 to 30
packages a night. The partners lost money on every shipment but learned that
there was a market for diapers on the Internet. They began with a few
hundred thousand dollars in seed money, which they spent, and then raised $4
million, and later $54 million, in venture financing. "Our gross margins at
the beginning were 4 percent," says Lore. "We were losing money on every
package."
After a one-line item ran in babytalk magazine, about six weeks in, DePaola
was shipping 180 packages a night and could no longer fit all the diapers
she needed into her minivan—so she got her father, who had a GMC Envoy, to
help. They would push cases of diapers through the store and customers would
make jokes like, "Triplets, eh?" Eventually she had to start renting trucks
from U-Haul and clearing out the entire store. Then she bought from Costco
(COST) and BJ's stores farther away. (Strangely, losing money on each
shipment increased their cash flow, as they were buying on credit cards with
standard 30-day billing periods and selling for payments that came through
in two days.) "Pretty soon," says Lore, "we would clear out all the stores
in a hundred-mile radius." The diapers filled DePaola's garage and started
to pile up on the lawn, until one night, when it was about to rain, they
realized they needed a real warehouse.
DePaola also provided the customer service. One customer who called
frequently was amazed that she "always got Gina." Others would demand to
speak with the manager, and DePaola would put the phone down, wait a little
bit, and then come back as "the manager."
Around that time, after about five months, P&G figured out that the business
was for real and gave them an account. By the end of the first year, they
had brought in about $2 million in revenue but had lost all their investment
. In 2006, after raising the $4 million in capital, they did $11 million in
revenue and had rented a professional warehouse in Virginia. In 2007 they
purchased the Diapers.com domain name, though they won't say for how much.
Their headquarters since April 2010 has been a 30,000-sq.-ft. space in a
tower in Jersey City overlooking Manhattan, where 85 representatives handle
customer questions. There, Lore and Bharara share an office, and even a
landline. DePaola doesn't work for Quidsi anymore. She is not forgotten,
however; the conference room in headquarters is named after her. Quidsi now
has about 550 employees.
On a perfect July day, Bharara drives out from his apartment in Manhattan
and picks up Lore in Mountain Lakes, N.J., for the two-hour drive to the new
Gouldsboro warehouse. In Mountain Lakes, Lore takes the wheel, and the two
spend the greater part of the trip deep in discussion about two of the
topics that interest them most—baseball and Jeff Bezos. | d********f
发帖数: 43471 | 3 其实中医最大的问题就是大部分有后顾之忧，然后就是做生意的方式不够美国化
diapers
here
a
【在 y***r 的大作中提到】
: 后面我就不转了，概括一下说吧，就是跟我们班上神医一样搞法，去bj，cost买了，然
: 后卖。刚开始一年都不赚钱。亏了1个m打出个名声来。
: It is good to be the chief executive of a company that's about to ship 500
: million diapers in a single year. For one thing, you get to drive a golf
: cart as fast as you want in your new 1,250,000-square-foot warehouse.
: "Hang on!" says Marc Lore, putting the hammer down.
: The golf cart leaps forward, racing through 10-foot-tall canyons of diapers
: stacked on pallets. At 25 miles an hour, the diaper mountains blur by, here
: a pyramid of Huggies Little Snugglers with pocketed back waistbands, there a
: tower of Pampers Swaddlers Sensitive economy size packs. Skyscrapers of
| y***r
发帖数: 16594 | 4 nod。
每次病人要退东西的时候，我总是感觉很不爽。其实我也知道该大大方方接受退货，并
100% refund。但心理总是别扭。上不了层次呀。
【在 d********f 的大作中提到】
: 其实中医最大的问题就是大部分有后顾之忧，然后就是做生意的方式不够美国化
:
: diapers
: here
: a
| B*D
发帖数: 5016 | 5 他们seed money不少，而且后来新投资进来的也很快
尤其考虑到亏损的情况下，这个不容易
这个客户群抓的也很好
【在 d********f 的大作中提到】
: 其实中医最大的问题就是大部分有后顾之忧，然后就是做生意的方式不够美国化
:
: diapers
: here
: a
| x*******1
发帖数: 4787 | 6 Curious why their first staff, quit the company?
The entire staff consisted of Gina DePaola, now 38, a college friend of Lore
's.The warehouse was her garage in Center Moriches on Long Island.
DePaola doesn't work for Quidsi anymore. She is not forgotten,
however; the conference room in headquarters is named after her | c*******e
发帖数: 8624 | 7 怎么觉得diaper就两三年的事情,以后不买diaper了还会回来吗?
【在 B*D 的大作中提到】
: 他们seed money不少，而且后来新投资进来的也很快
: 尤其考虑到亏损的情况下，这个不容易
: 这个客户群抓的也很好
| B*D
发帖数: 5016 | 8 美国人口增长率是2.2好像，发达国家中最健康的
【在 c*******e 的大作中提到】
: 怎么觉得diaper就两三年的事情,以后不买diaper了还会回来吗?
| K******S
发帖数: 10109 | 9 什么生意都能黄，除了卖奶粉，DIAPER的。
【在 c*******e 的大作中提到】
: 怎么觉得diaper就两三年的事情,以后不买diaper了还会回来吗?
| K******S
发帖数: 10109 | 10 AMIGO功不可没啊
【在 B*D 的大作中提到】
: 美国人口增长率是2.2好像，发达国家中最健康的
|
|
