Jet.com's Founder Marc Lore: 3 Things You Need to Know About the Man Taking on Amazon With the much-anticipated ecommerce site Jet.com launching today, we discovered a few lesser-known facts about the Internet mogul.
By Carly Okyle
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The much-anticipated online shopping club Jet.com launched today. The company captured attention from investors -- Jet.com has raised $225 million to date, according to Crunchbase.com -- and has made news coverage for its plan to compete with retail behemoth Amazon.com. After a 90-day free trial, customers pay $49.99 a year for access to the website's bargains. Customers save more money when they let Jet figure out the most economical way to ship goods, even if that means waiting longer to combine shipping from different sellers. Approximately 100,000 people signed up for the site's beta trials, and Lore expects 15 million customers by 2020, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The founder of the site, Marc Lore, is a veteran of ecommerce. Lore was previously the co-founder, chairman and CEO of Quidsi, the parent company of Diapers.com and Soap.com.
Want to learn more about the Internet mogul taking on Amazon? Here's what we know so far:
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1. He's loyal.
Lore sold Quidsi to Amazon in 2010 for an estimated $500 million in cash. When starting his newest venture, Lore brought in his old colleagues. He's working with Quidsi's former project director Mike Hanrahan and Nathan Faust, the VP of special operations at Quidsi.
2. He's customer focused.
When he ran Diapers.com, the packages came in colorful boxes and often included a personal note for the new parents. When Amazon took over, both of those touches were discarded. Discussing that change in an interview, Lore told Bloomberg.com, "It was a superlogical decision, and I'm sure the numbers worked out fine. But you can't put a number on what it means to create a personal connection to the consumer."
3. He doesn't shop online.
Yes, seriously. In an interview with Forbes, he was asked if he was an Amazon Prime member. He responded, "I don't really shop online. I don't really do a lot of shopping in general."
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