Jet.com : The Costco of Ecommerce

Ecommerce is mutating. It is adapting to its own maturation. You can see it with retail tycoons emerging like Amazon or Alibaba. But you can also see it with the different business modells adapted. You can see that some keys of Ecommerce in a very near future may be:

• The marketplace to offer the wider product range possible.
• The last mile solution, with the development of drive in pick up, and lockers in high traffic places
• The usage of social media as a primar leverage of visits.
• But I also believe that we will see more and more original business modells.

I recently read an article of French Newspaper Les Echos About a company named Jet.com. The article name it "the Costco of Ecommerce". Indeed, Jet.com is a club membership based retailer: You need to pay a $49,99 fee to access the different offers.

What is very innovative, is that the more you add goods in your cart, the cheaper the prices of items are. Also, what is interesting, and different from Costco, is that the saving is clearly marked out, and especially, the price is compared to other Emerchants. I believe actually it is comparing only to Amazon (see below), clearly the market leader.

The Founder Mark Lore was also the founder of diapers.com or soap.com, which were Emerchants specialized on specifi category of products (as the names explain).

The concept is great, and I believe in it. Indeed, Costco is fore sure one of the finest retailer in the world, with outstanding sales results:

• The membership concept secures profit margins to the 
• It also allows jet.com to lower its gross margins to be competitive.
• It also secures a high end clientele, able to pay up front a 50 bucks fee to access the website.
• Even though they have a relatively short product of range for a Emerchants, it owns way more merchandise than a standard club warehouse company.
• Moreover, US customers are familiar with the concept, as Costco and Sam's Club among others use the same concept in brick mortar land.

Beyond Jet.com, I am sure that smart Emerchant business modell will soon pop out.