Diapers.com & Jet.com: Marc Lore

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 17 May 2021

⏱️ 76 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Around 2003, after forays into banking, baseball cards, and—believe it or not—bobsledding, Marc Lore landed on an idea for an e-commerce business: a website to make it simple for parents to order diapers. The only problem, as he quickly discovered, was that it's impossible to make money selling diapers on the internet. But Marc and his co-founder had a strategy: they'd lose money on diapers, but make it up by selling other baby products. By 2010, Diapers.com was such a competitive threat that Amazon acquired the company for over $500 million. In 2015, Marc launched another e-commerce venture and Amazon competitor called Jet.com. Walmart bought Jet.com less than a year later in a deal valued at $3.3 billion.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:07.0	Download the app today.
0:09.0	When you leave home, can you ever really go back?
0:12.0	Made a version!
0:13.0	Soccer legend Leo Messi and I both left Argentina as kids.
0:17.0	You know you're that piece of a puzzle that doesn't fit anywhere.
0:20.0	To so many immigrants, football is a way to reconnect.
0:23.0	Listen to the last cop in the embedded podcast feed
0:26.0	to hear the latest collaboration from MPR and Fududo Studios.
0:32.0	In the early days, believe it or not, we'd actually go to the wholesale clubs.
0:36.0	So, BJ's, Sam's Club, and we would buy the diapers.
0:40.0	And you were just paying full price for these diapers?
0:43.0	Full price, no discount.
0:45.0	Then you got to market up on the website.
0:47.0	So why would somebody buy them from you on the website?
0:50.0	We didn't mark them up.
0:52.0	You didn't mark them up?
0:53.0	No, we just lost more money.
0:55.0	You were basically losing money to make it more convenient for people to get diapers.
0:59.0	As one investor like to say, let me get this straight.
1:02.0	So you're selling a dollar for 90 cents?
1:09.0	From MPR, it's how I built this.
	...

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