Jet.com launched with fanfare at the end of July as the deeply-funded Amazon rival that was going all-in on offering the lowest prices. A month in, ChannelAdvisor has released early insights on how the start-up is faring with merchants and consumers.
“We were pretty impressed and surprised at the first month following the launch,” David Spitz, ChannelAdvisor CEO, said by phone. Jet.com has already become the fourth most productive marketplace in terms of generating gross merchandise volume (GMV) for the firm’s customers selling on the site. That puts Jet.com ahead of established marketplaces Sears, Best Buy, Newegg, Tesco and Rakuten.
What’s interesting is that Jet appears to be driving incremental demand, rather than taking would-be orders from Amazon or other marketplaces among these third-party sellers. Spitz thinks that perhaps orders are coming from offline big box membership stores like Costco and BJs. “Out of the gate, Jet has said the Amazon Prime customer isn’t their target, it’s people who are value conscious first”, says Spitz. Even for those customers who also shopped on Amazon and eBay during the period, their purchase rates on those sites remained unchanged before and after Jet went live.
Jet also appears to be providing a good user experience. ChannelAdvisor says the repeat buyer rate is a strong 23 percent, compared to 17 percent for eBay and 11 percent for Amazon (though Spitz cautions that Amazon Prime Day was included in the time period, a promotion specifically designed to bring in new Prime members).
Jet’s solid repeat buyer rate could be an early indicator of the site’s ability to turn buyers into loyal members. On the other hand, it could reflect users trying to make the most of their free-trial periods. For now, as Spitz says, “the experience was clearly good enough to lure people back within a relatively short time frame.”
ChannelAdvisor also says that it has seen a lot of seller interest from companies selling products in a broad spectrum of verticals. Those sellers have “seen tens of thousands of unique consumers buying on Jet” since launch, says the company.
While these early indications are promising for Jet, the real measure will begin to come after users’ free membership trials expire in three or six months after launch, depending on when they signed up, and they’re asked to pay Jet’s annual membership fee of $49.99.
The start-up launched a social-driven consumer campaign earlier this month with the agency SS+K.
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