I was meeting with a smart VC yesterday doing a mini post-mortem on Aprizi, our “Pandora for shopping”. When asked what I would do differently a second time, the number one thing is I would have rolled out the e-commerce model right away. I think a special bond forms between a customer and a service when the customer parts with …
Designers, entrepreneurs and doing business on the Web
I regularly talk to small and medium-sized designers and business owners in the sectors where Aprizi plays. It is always interesting to hear about their challenges and tactics for success. They are entrepreneurs just like we are in the world of tech. Some of these interviews get converted into posts for The Tail, Aprizi’s blog. I wanted to highlight one …
Design is always context-specific
I’ve had an interesting couple of days here at Altimeter’s “Rise of Social Commerce” conference. It was great being in the startup showcase with some cool companies like Swipely, Quorus, Open Sky, and 8 others. There have also been lots of case studies from bigger companies trying to make sense of “social commerce”. The diversity of what I have been …
Please take my 6 question survey!
I am running an informal survey and will be reporting the results back here. If you have a moment, please take this short survey asking about consumer shopping online, and how you think it might change. Take the survey!
SMB Ecommerce, Advertising, and the False Assurance of Numbers
I’ve been talking to a lot of SMB ecommerce players lately, especially in areas such as lifestyle, fashion and homeware. Most of them have tried online advertising, but backed off. They looked at the conversions, decided the numbers did not add up, and instead focused energies on customer service, email lists and social media. I’ve also been talking to a …
Trends with the Sample Sale Sites
Last night I attended the Fashion 2.0 meetup in New York. Needless to say, it was *quite* a different scene from the Lean Startup meetup the night before. The fashion panel (with some bright people like Suzanne Norris of Kate Spade, Florent Peyre of Elle/HFM, Steve Hafner of Kayak, and Apar Kothari of MyNines) helped round out my thoughts about …