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Yup. But it's not nearly as cool with the hipster kiddos, or the venture capitalists who cater to them, as social/mobile/photo/videos are. Meanwhile, we are i

by diolpah 15y ago

Yup. But it's not nearly as cool with the hipster kiddos, or the venture capitalists who cater to them, as social/mobile/photo/videos are. Meanwhile, we are in the distant background, building solid businesses. I am actually surprised to see this make it to HN.

retube 15y ago
wow. ties.com & scarves.com. Impressed - the domains alone must be worth a bomb. In the UK I see a number of large e-tail brands fighting to take the fashion/clothing market, e.g asos, net-a-porter + of course all the big b-n-m retailers now have fairly mature e-commerce channels. Do you really think there's still space in this market?
- diolpah 15y ago
  Absolutely. There are many mom and pop retailers who are doing many things wrong or inefficiently in this space, who are still surviving, even thriving. It is a target rich environment.
- leviathant 15y ago
  As someone who works for an eCommerce company and has a wife who shops online, absolutely. Whenever she tells me about how this company or that company has a bad shopping experience, I pass that along to our sales department. There are plenty of retail sites (certainly in clothing & fashion) that are running on platforms that are several years old, and would benefit from things like simplified checkout, ajax shopping carts, better integrated email marketing, abandoned cart campaigns, review follow-ups, etc.
JunkDNA 15y ago
Wow... impressive bio. I'd love to hear more about the retail internet space, do you have a blog? I feel like there isn't a lot of good info out there on how to operate at a moderate scale (i.e. you're not trying to be Amazon, but you're also not trying to sell one or two hand-made things on etsy either). Retail has always been a bit of a turnoff since you need to have money tied up in inventory, deal with lots of physical stuff, etc... Growing up, my relatives had mail order and retail businesses. Dealing with all those physical things as well as people is very... messy. On the other hand, buying things, and selling them to other people is a centuries-old tested business model. No need to come up with an ground-breaking idea. Just need to execute (the hard part).
- diolpah 15y ago
  No blog, but if you have specific questions, you're welcome to email me - I just added my email address to my profile. I understand the sentiment of retail being a turnoff because of the atoms vs bits issue. But something you may not realize is that there are tremendously difficult problems to solve in this space. You mention how "messy" it all is - and the problems associated with organizing and automating this mess are, in many ways, very enjoyable to solve with technology.

by diolpah 15y ago

retube 15y ago

wow. ties.com & scarves.com. Impressed - the domains alone must be worth a bomb. In the UK I see a number of large e-tail brands fighting to take the fashion/clothing market, e.g asos, net-a-porter + of course all the big b-n-m retailers now have fairly mature e-commerce channels. Do you really think there's still space in this market?

diolpah 15y ago
Absolutely. There are many mom and pop retailers who are doing many things wrong or inefficiently in this space, who are still surviving, even thriving. It is a target rich environment.
leviathant 15y ago
As someone who works for an eCommerce company and has a wife who shops online, absolutely. Whenever she tells me about how this company or that company has a bad shopping experience, I pass that along to our sales department. There are plenty of retail sites (certainly in clothing & fashion) that are running on platforms that are several years old, and would benefit from things like simplified checkout, ajax shopping carts, better integrated email marketing, abandoned cart campaigns, review follow-ups, etc.

JunkDNA 15y ago

Wow... impressive bio. I'd love to hear more about the retail internet space, do you have a blog? I feel like there isn't a lot of good info out there on how to operate at a moderate scale (i.e. you're not trying to be Amazon, but you're also not trying to sell one or two hand-made things on etsy either). Retail has always been a bit of a turnoff since you need to have money tied up in inventory, deal with lots of physical stuff, etc... Growing up, my relatives had mail order and retail businesses. Dealing with all those physical things as well as people is very... messy. On the other hand, buying things, and selling them to other people is a centuries-old tested business model. No need to come up with an ground-breaking idea. Just need to execute (the hard part).

diolpah 15y ago
No blog, but if you have specific questions, you're welcome to email me - I just added my email address to my profile. I understand the sentiment of retail being a turnoff because of the atoms vs bits issue. But something you may not realize is that there are tremendously difficult problems to solve in this space. You mention how "messy" it all is - and the problems associated with organizing and automating this mess are, in many ways, very enjoyable to solve with technology.