Jet.com, the online marketplace that launched in July aiming to undercut Amazon on price, appears to be making headway in the turbulent atmosphere of large-scale e-commerce.
The newcomer is already the fourth biggest marketplace, according to ChannelAdvisor, a platform that connects third-party sellers with the likes of eBay and Amazon. That places it ahead of Sears, BestBuy, and Rakuten. In fact, Jet’s gross merchandise value is twice that of Sears, the software provider claims.
ChannelAdvisor bases its figures on the results of third-party sellers, who report that they’ve seen thousands of unique consumers buying on Jet. Further, they have recorded a 23% repeat buyer rate for the upstart during a period when eBay posted 17% in the metric and Amazon 11%.
“It’s early, but so far this is evidence that in fact Jet may be driving incrementally new demand instead of cannibalizing existing channels. It may be that Jet is picking up consumers who previously might have shopped offline at Costco, for example,” says ChannelAdvisor CEO David Spitz.
Off-the-wall advertising featuring barbershop quartets, morning pigs, and yodelers could have helped corral customers. To wit:
