Wie Zazz in sechs Monaten die Gewinnschwelle erreicht hat
So mancher bezweifelt ja immer noch, dass Live Shopping Dienste wie Woot! & Co überhaupt profitabel arbeiten können.
Doch nicht nur das holländische iBOOD verdient gutes Geld. Auch das australische Zazz war eigenen Angaben zufolge in sechs Monaten profitabel - und das mit einer überschaubaren Menge an Nutzern:
"Alfred Milgrom says Zazz now has 25,000 members and half subscribe to the daily or monthly email. Revenue is about $4 million and operational costs are about half a million.
He and his business partner Alain Sarfati started with three staff and now employ 10, and outsource a lot of functions. It took six months to be profitable."
Das australische Online-Magazin SmartCompany hatte im Oktober ein interessantes Interview mit den Zazz-Gründern, in dem es erfreulicherweise einmal nicht um den Schnäppchen- und Aktionscharakter, sondern vor allem um den gemeinhin so unterschätzten Community-Faktor geht:
"But in founding Zazz, Milgrom set out to build a strong online community because he was convinced it was essential to his success."
Wie hat sich Zazz eine Community aufgebaut?
"The main way was through forums. We set them up from the start. We invited and seeded comments, invited friends and waited. The planted comments were found and we stopped doing it.
In retrospect the best part was people giving us a bad time – not that we thought that at the time.
But it was the best thing – it meant we did not have a tame forum. We got picked on for being sloppy about technical specifications and not describing products properly. And we got into trouble for saying shipping was free when the cost was included in the product.
One guy in particular really went on about this, but the next day we put up a comment saying free shipping except for this guy, and it was great because everyone could see that we were laughing at ourselves."
Der Pate ist überall ;-)
Und wie in den USA oder hierzulande lässt sich auch in Australien beobachten, dass Nachahmer und Wettbewerber immer wieder in dieselben Fallen tappen:
"One competitor is spending a lot of money on advertising. But none made forums work. Two launched with forums but they subsequently closed them. One competitor is no longer in business."
Da helfen auch die tollsten Schnäppchen nichts: Wer es nicht schafft, seine Community ins Laufen zu bekommen, der hat im Live Shopping schon verloren.
Weitere spannende Infos und Berichte über Zazz finden sich hier und hier
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