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 …
Advertising & eCommerce: Respecting the Consumer
A few entrepreneurs have written lately about the blurring of ecommerce and advertising (albeit advertising that is about driving a sale rather than building brand affinity). I agree; Aprizi’s attempt to build a “Pandora for online shopping” shares some traits with ad targeting efforts because in the end we’re all trying to improve relevance. I want to highlight a key …
Introducing Aprizi
We finally have an alpha. Even if it is held together by string and scotch tape, it’s really exciting for us. Up to now, we’ve been focused on learning consumer behavior, testing hypotheses, and focusing our ideas. Now we are out to get confirmation (or lack thereof) based on actual usage of a minimal viable product. So what are we …