4 ms·

I found this case study video to be a good summary of what went wrong with Blue Apron: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpQkAEei08w https://www.youtube.com/watc

by ben174 9y ago

I found this case study video to be a good summary of what went wrong with Blue Apron: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpQkAEei08w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpQkAEei08w

jobu 9y ago
Great analysis! Why the hell did Blue Apron buy a ranch? https://youtu.be/UpQkAEei08w?t=10m59s https://youtu.be/UpQkAEei08w?t=10m59s
- jrs235 9y ago
  Someone thought going vertical was a good idea. Which might be after you're mature and profitable and going vertical can be shown to reduce costs. Someone got ahead of themselves though. Now they are beholdened to the cost of the ranch raised meat. What if it's more than other suppliers?!
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    Spin the ranch off as an upscale brand. "Blue Apron Reserve", "Blue Apron Farm To Table", etc.
    - jrs235 9y ago
      Which makes sense, once you've nailed down what you need to be good at and profitable. It's sounds like a good idea and differentiator, but it seems like a premature pivot too.
BoiledCabbage 9y ago
I'm not familiar with the presenter, but I found this "case-study" to be mostly filler. ie a case study by someone looking for things to say, but doesn't really understand the problem. A summary of his critiques: "They grew too quickly for their own good." Ok, so his conclusions, they should've grown more slowly "The giant Amazon entered the market and scared people away from them" Being an even smaller company wouldn't have helped fight amazon. Being larger and in a sufficient position with high enough revenue to try to fight amazon or get negotiate better rates would've. But this exactly contradicts growing too fast] "Don't buy a ranch" This point is funny, and makes for a catch phrase, but buying that single ranch had no significant impact on their profits. They aren't succeeding or failing because of that ranch. It's something convenient to point to and say a cliche like "you're not focusing on your core competencies", but honestly that likely had a .001 percent impact on their actual business. And no I don't imaging 70% of their management team is focusing on that ranch at the expense of their core business. This entire video feels like fluff, mad-money style analysis to me. And really gives no insights as to what is happening to their business. Things I would've found interesting. Are they losing customers? Has growth stopped? What are competitors spending on marketing? What are competitors acquisition rates? How long does the average customer stay? Was it priced assuming it was long term customers, but customers actually only stay less than 1yr then move on? Are single people using it to learn cooking then leave? Do customers that leave, leave the industry or just move to another service? Are customers just hopping/rotating between multiple services? Answers to those questions would provide some insight. this presentation really had nothing to me. The closest thing was the food safety issue, but again did that actually impact delivery rates? Or costs? is it just normal cost of doing business in produce/meat delivery? I really expected more from this.

by ben174 9y ago

I found this case study video to be a good summary of what went wrong with Blue Apron: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpQkAEei08w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpQkAEei08w

jobu 9y ago

Great analysis! Why the hell did Blue Apron buy a ranch? https://youtu.be/UpQkAEei08w?t=10m59s https://youtu.be/UpQkAEei08w?t=10m59s

jrs235 9y ago
Someone thought going vertical was a good idea. Which might be after you're mature and profitable and going vertical can be shown to reduce costs. Someone got ahead of themselves though. Now they are beholdened to the cost of the ranch raised meat. What if it's more than other suppliers?!
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Spin the ranch off as an upscale brand. "Blue Apron Reserve", "Blue Apron Farm To Table", etc.
  - jrs235 9y ago
    Which makes sense, once you've nailed down what you need to be good at and profitable. It's sounds like a good idea and differentiator, but it seems like a premature pivot too.

BoiledCabbage 9y ago

I'm not familiar with the presenter, but I found this "case-study" to be mostly filler. ie a case study by someone looking for things to say, but doesn't really understand the problem. A summary of his critiques: "They grew too quickly for their own good." Ok, so his conclusions, they should've grown more slowly "The giant Amazon entered the market and scared people away from them" Being an even smaller company wouldn't have helped fight amazon. Being larger and in a sufficient position with high enough revenue to try to fight amazon or get negotiate better rates would've. But this exactly contradicts growing too fast] "Don't buy a ranch" This point is funny, and makes for a catch phrase, but buying that single ranch had no significant impact on their profits. They aren't succeeding or failing because of that ranch. It's something convenient to point to and say a cliche like "you're not focusing on your core competencies", but honestly that likely had a .001 percent impact on their actual business. And no I don't imaging 70% of their management team is focusing on that ranch at the expense of their core business. This entire video feels like fluff, mad-money style analysis to me. And really gives no insights as to what is happening to their business. Things I would've found interesting. Are they losing customers? Has growth stopped? What are competitors spending on marketing? What are competitors acquisition rates? How long does the average customer stay? Was it priced assuming it was long term customers, but customers actually only stay less than 1yr then move on? Are single people using it to learn cooking then leave? Do customers that leave, leave the industry or just move to another service? Are customers just hopping/rotating between multiple services? Answers to those questions would provide some insight. this presentation really had nothing to me. The closest thing was the food safety issue, but again did that actually impact delivery rates? Or costs? is it just normal cost of doing business in produce/meat delivery? I really expected more from this.