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Thank you…………………………………………………………………………….….……….pg. 34
What is Private Sales, and why is it so hot
right now?
Invite-Only
A key element of successful retailers is
successful marketing. Private Sales sites
use mostly viral email marketing,
where friends invite each other to join
the site. These messages have a much
higher open rate than standard email
campaigns because they come from
someone the recipient knows.
Name-Brand Merchandise
For brands and retailers that have the product assortment to support the
model (products with a sense of exclusivity, that are premium and/or
expensive), Private Sales sites offer a unique venue for distributing
excess product when demand has been miscalculated.
The ecommerce world has had difficulty translating this experience online.
Often, a shopper will come to an online store for one item and leave with
that one item — or even nothing, given an industry average cart
abandonment rate of 60%.
Private sales is a very attractive online retail concept, largely due to the
following:
• VCs funding new entrants, such as BuyVIP, Secret Sales and Private
Outlet.
vente-privee
Founded in 2001, vente-privee is the originator of the Private Sales concept,
offering daily sales events to members that feature international designer
brand merchandise. The company has seen rapid growth, with over $1
billion in revenue in 2010 and projections to grow 22% each year. Vente-
privee operates in France, Germany, UK, Italy and Spain.
Gilt Groupe
Founded in 2007, Gilt Groupe provides invitation-only access to fashion and
luxury-brand sales events lasting 36 hours. Gilt is a major player, with $500
million in revenue in 2010.
ideeli
ideeli was the first members-only shopping community in the U.S., founded
in 2006. Ideeli offers limited-time sales events to more than 1.3 million
members, featuring top brands in fashion, home and beauty. The company
recently received $20 million VC funding.
Rue La La
Founded in 2008, Rue La La is a division of Retail Convergence, Inc., a
portfolio of ecommerce companies that use a common technology platform,
customer database and management team to create a luxury Private Sales
experience. Rue La La was acquired by GSI Commerce for $350 million in
October 2009.
Hautelook
HauteLook, founded in 2007, operates a marketplace through which
premium fashion and lifestyle brands host 24-48 hour private sales events.
The company achieved $90 million in revenue last year.
The chart below shows the dramatic gains in unique visitor traffic
for these companies* over the last year — roughly a 300% increase
total, with each seeing at least +100% yearly change.
Therefore, we reviewed these sites for key business model design elements
that drive their success, as well as some unique elements to watch as
trends going forward.
• What are the best practices that can be learned from the leaders?
• What are predictions for future capabilities that the leaders will
offer?
Viral Invitations
New customer acquisition is driven primarily through people inviting
their friends. This dramatically reduces the traditional customer
acquisition costs of advertising, direct mail marketing, SEO, paid
search and affiliates.
Cart Reservation
One of the biggest complaints from Private Sales shoppers is that an item
will sell out in the time it takes them to move an item placed in a cart to
checkout.
A notable difference between key players is whether or not the reservation time
is shown — a consideration between notifying the customer that they may
continue shopping to drive up average order volume, versus the risk that
they will horde merchandise in their cart.
However, this tactic can also create a huge challenge for IT in supporting
extreme spikes in traffic. Though your IT team would much prefer to spread
the start time of sales events throughout the day to ease the operations,
the business benefits of having customers that know what time to
come to the site every day greatly outweighs the additional IT costs
and performance challenges.
For this reason, buying many items may require several checkouts, inevitably
leading to call-center complaints about multiple shipping charges for same-
day purchases. Advertising that free shipping is available for additional
items purchased within a given number of hours builds goodwill, increases
order volume, and most importantly does not create disgruntled shoppers.
Fashion content
Private Sales sites have the opportunity to influence
shoppers through richer content around the
available products. Many of the sites provide
little-to-no content around the items.
For example, Rue La La has partnered with Bravo to sponsor the show,
Launch My Line.
Private Sales sites could market to these consumers directly with special
offers, increased incentives to extend invitations or competitive leader
boards to see who is the biggest influencer.
Crowd Visualization
Part of the power of Private
Sales sites is the rush of the
crowd at the start of an event,
which generates impulse
purchases.
Social Analytics
This is a nascent area, but as Private Event sites learn how to mine
and analyze social graph information, a new level of
personalization can be explored where “customers like you” can
truly be identified.
Private Sales has become one of the fastest growing new retail
concepts. Many companies are looking to offer Private
Sales to tap into this trend, but how do you know if it
makes sense for your business?
Is Private Sales a fit for your business?
For an existing retailer to make a Private Sales model work there are a few
key elements to consider:
Marc Osofsky
Marc Osofsky is the vice president of marketing for Optaros and
leads the company’s go-to-market efforts and solution
development. Marc has more than 15 years of experience in helping
businesses leverage new technologies to achieve their business
objectives.
Adam Michelson
Adam Michelson serves as the director of ecommerce at Optaros.
He works with clients to leverage next generation internet
technologies for ecommerce re-platforming, new online retail
concepts and multi-channel efforts.