[Kevinweng]

ok I know I am delusional, but allow me to continue...

If you've noticed, there is increased trend that big retailers like Wal-Mart and BestBuy are offering online order with free store pick up service. To me online order is cool but store pick up just defeats the purpose of online. High shipping cost is not good either.

Well I've developed an unconventional business model to do efficient home delivery of online order from local retail store. By deploying this model, retailers like Wal-mart and BestBuy can offer online shopping with low shipping cost. How low? I am talking about less than the driving cost if you chose to shop in store personally. Online shopping from Wal-Mart with low shipping cost is golden: It is convenient, it is cheap and you can return to Wal-Mart if you don't like what you buy.

I've filed a patent for the business model. I've built core software and website(Vertour.com, you need to request a login from me). Well my model can not exist on its own. I need the retailer to be my partner. I start talking to my connections in retail industry and realize that the retailers are usually risk averse. Adopting a unconventional model is not something Wal-mart will do with some little guy like me.

So what do I do now? Go to VCs? I really don't need much money and I certainly would want to avoid VC if I can. My ideal scenario would be some influential guy buy in my model and get involved, be my partner and sell the model to the big retailer. Well how do I even get to these influential guys?

Let me rephrase the question and I promise to go back to sanity after this message, if you have a Netfilx like idea, what would you do? Go to VCs? Recruit top talents to run it? How?

Note: The reason I used Netflix as an example is that Netflix is unconventional and yet it revolutionized the DVD rental business. Netflix's business model is patent protected. They sued BlockBuster for infringement recently.

[New billionaire]

Dear Kelvinweng,

You said that you developed an unconventional business model to do efficient home delivery of online order from local retail store. This doesn't mean that you can reduce the shipping cost. There is still a need to transfer the physical stocks to the buyers.
Even how good the software or system are, you still need transportation and etc to get the products to the hand of the buyers. Perhaps, you could share more details information on how you reduce the costs.

Reduce the costs by giving it to them as Legal Downloadable Content? Be one of the first to jump on that bandwagon?

[jdoc]

VCs may or may not listen to you, visit some of Akula's threads on what they're looking for to see if you have a hope of attracting their attention (God this place needs an FAQ).

What do you exactly need out of a retailer? Do they need to do anything special, or are they just there to fulfill your orders, and you handle the rest? If it's the latter case, I would suggest checking out Best Buy's affiliate program and seeing if you can create a website to handle the orders yourself instead of sending them off to Best Buy for processing. That way you could use their inventory catalogue to have your customers browse, but then you go into the store and pick them up.

Something like this may break their affiliate agreement, but hey, if you're successful and you can demonstrate that you're generating business for them then you'll be in a much better position to get them to work with you and improve your offering long term.

I think the key is finding a way to work without needing explicit consent of the retailers in helping you out at first.

Note: others are catering to the premium side of this market, where people are willing to pay (possibly outrageously high) shipping costs for near immediate delivery. Check out: http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/05/11...y-licketyship/

[Kevinweng]

jdoc, thanks for mentioning licketyship.com. I know them. There is also uship.com. My model has some elements from these two innovative business, but is substantially different. Also my market is more main stream than theirs.

Scott, funny you mentioned Download center. Have you thought of how bitTorrent can be applied to the physical world? If you figured that out, that is how cost can be reduced.

My difficulty is that the model will require the retailers to deploy some kiosks in the store. It is not just a website. The retailer also need to make my shipping method available to its online shoppers. A buyer would just login to Wal-mart.com, buys anything she need and chooses my delivery service. From there I will take care of delivery from the point the order is packaged and ready for pick up in the store.

jdoc you are right on that the key is to remove the reliance on retailer. Unfortunately this is probably one of the basis of the model. In some aspect this might be a advantage since the model is an incremental step of whole online shopping infrastructure the big retailers already built.

The other difficulty is the real world proof before I talk to the money people. Again using the analogy of Netfilx, how can they get the proof before launching the business? It is brand new and any analysis of consumer behavior is a guess at best. I am working on a survey to end consumer to test their acceptance. Other than that, any suggestion on how to obtain some real world proof?

[Bscivolette]

In order to proceed you must have a partner who is not only well versed in the retail area but well connected. 15 years ago my father told me , "it's not what you know, its who" and that still stands true today.

Get in with the right people, those people can get the big dogs to listen. Once you have the right people listening everything will fall into play. Good luck

[jdoc]

Originally Posted by Kevinweng

My difficulty is that the model will require the retailers to deploy some kiosks in the store. It is not just a website. The retailer also need to make my shipping method available to its online shoppers. A buyer would just login to Wal-mart.com, buys anything she need and chooses my delivery service. From there I will take care of delivery from the point the order is packaged and ready for pick up in the store.

I don't understand the need for kiosks; the remainder of your first paragraph above seems to be that all you need to know is that someone needs an item from a particular retailer shipped to a particular location. If you can trap that information before it gets to the retailer, then you can go there yourself and get the item on their behalf. You have to probably do more work since the product won't be ready and waiting for pickup, but if you're looking to start out without support then you need to look at doing extra work to get traction. That's life.

Originally Posted by Kevinweng

The other difficulty is the real world proof before I talk to the money people. Again using the analogy of Netfilx, how can they get the proof before launching the business? It is brand new and any analysis of consumer behavior is a guess at best. I am working on a survey to end consumer to test their acceptance. Other than that, any suggestion on how to obtain some real world proof?

People with money are unlikely to listen to you if a) you have no experience, b) you are not referred to them by someone they know and trust, and/or c) have not proved any part of the business model. You live in/near the Valley though, one of the hotbeds of innovation in the world. Start looking for software-related events, talk to other developers, hit up conferences where the keynotes are experienced entrepreneurs who have lots of money and just exited their last venture. Don't open with your idea, get to know them and vice versa before trying to pitch your idea - they already get that from a bunch of kooks. Obviously this isn't the fast track, but really there is little that will allow you to shortcut this if you really need financing to get started. Don't be afraid to bring someone else into the fold - ideas are only ideas and are worth nothing if you don't have all the skills and resources needed to see them to fruition.

I'd still suggest revisiting your business model/operations to see if there's a way you can get around needing retailers explicit consent at first. It may cost you more time and/or money at the start, but once you have people paying you to do something you'd be surprised how much more credibility you'll have when you're trying to convince people that what you're doing will help them.

[Kevinweng]

jdoc, thanks for the suggestions. What you said is very insightful and right on. I will give you a login once my website content is updated.

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[jdoc]

Originally Posted by Kevinweng

jdoc, thanks for the suggestions. What you said is very insightful and right on. I will give you a login once my website content is updated.

OK, send me a PM with the info when you're ready.

[yourfreebankroll]

Dear Kelvinweng,

You said that you developed an unconventional business model to do efficient home delivery of online order from local retail store. This doesn't mean that you can reduce the shipping cost. There is still a need to transfer the physical stocks to the buyers.
Even how good the software or system are, you still need transportation and etc to get the products to the hand of the buyers. Perhaps, you could share more details information on how you reduce the costs.


well said