V-Commerce
Build a Product-Focused Audience
We did it wrong too. Most founders do what Jeremy and I did at Tortuga [http://www.tortugabackpacks.com]. They experience a problem, build a solution, then try to sell it to other people. This formula is a great way to find yourself sitting on inventory or, in our case,
Is Smart Luggage Already Over?
In the last three weeks, two of the early smart luggage brands, Bluesmart and Raden, have shut down. What does this mean for the rest of the new luggage startups? Following an announcement late last year, many major airlines banned smart luggage with non-removable batteries [https://www.theverge.com/2017/
The Sound and Fury of Startup Marketing
Ben Thompson of Stratechery, my favorite tech writer, recently covered the success of Stitch Fix [https://stratechery.com/2017/stitch-fix-and-the-senate/]. > I am in fact deeply impressed by Stitch Fix: it seems quite clear that early on [CEO Katrina] Lake realized that the company was not an aggregator, which meant
Overcoming the Fast Fashion Story
Liz Pape, the founder of Elizabeth Suzann [https://elizabethsuzann.com/], wrote an excellent post addressing pricing in the fashion industry [https://elizabethsuzann.com/blogs/stories/money-talk] earlier this year. Her clothing line is made in the USA of premium fabrics and priced accordingly. In the post, she discusses consumers evaluating
Amazon Copies, Walmart Acquires
> "Amazon will knock off a lot of DNVBs (digitally native vertical brands). Walmart will acquire them." -Web Smith [https://twitter.com/web] on Well Made, Episode 28 [http://blog.lumi.com/wellmade/28-web-smith] Whoa. That short quote has a lot of info to process. Web summarized the
Perception (of Success) Isn't Reality
This graphic from a recent CB Insights [https://www.cbinsights.com] newsletter shows the numbers behind three online mattress companies. Can you guess which is which? Casper (#1), which seems omnipresent, is losing money and "is a fundamentally inferior company to two of its competitors." Only 11% of
Tailwinds
Reading this Atlantic article on the Retail Meltdown of 2017 [https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/retail-meltdown-of-2017/522384/] reminded me of the importance of riding tailwinds in a business. The winners take advantage of societal and market trends. The losers resist the change that is obvious to everyone
Clearing Out Inventory
In Silicon Valley, every company wants to be a platform. Platforms make money by taking a skim off of every transaction. The platform business model promises VCs unlimited upside and no hard costs like inventory or equipment. Amazon started by buying books and storing them in its warehouses. Now, sellers
The V-Commerce Tech Stack
Greetings, future v-commerce entrepreneur. This post is a guide to what you need to get started selling online and is meant for bootstrapped v-commerce companies [https://www.fredperrotta.com/bootstrapped-vcommerce] like Tortuga [http://www.tortugabackpacks.com]. Let's run down the important tech you'll need to get
Bootstrapped V-Commerce
In my last post [https://www.fredperrotta.com/reinvesting], I outlined how we've improved our products by increasing our investment in materials and design. The Outbreaker backpack [http://www.tortugabackpacks.com/products/outbreaker-travel-backpack] and daypack [http://www.tortugabackpacks.com/products/outbreaker-travel-daypack] each cost twice as much to make