After raising over $200 million in funding, Jet.com, the Amazon challenger from the co-founder of Diapers.com, finally has a public launch date: July 21.
On stage at Fortune Brainstorm Tech in Aspen, Marc Lore said he was confident about his latest e-commerce upstart’s launch in eight days.
Jet is hoping to take on the brick and mortar warehouse clubs like Sam’s Club and Costco. As Lore explained on stage, for $50 a year, Jet members will be able to buy products like diapers, household goods and more at prices 10% to 15% below the lowest prices online. Lore adds that Jet will launch with 10 million products across all product categories.
Jet will also have to prove its reported valuation of $600 million to its investors. But Lore isn’t worried. “We saw an opportunity to innovate around price, no one was focused on disrupting lower prices in e-commerce,” he said.
Is Jet gunning for Lore’s former employer Amazon, which bought Diapers.com’s parent, Quidsi, five years ago for $550 million? Not true, he claims. His latest project is very different, he insists. The way in which shoppers save money is a key difference. Shoppers get lower prices based on what is in their shopping carts, and how products could be shipped more efficiently (and less expensively).
How will Jet evaluate success? The goal is to get to $20 billion in revenue by 2020, said Lore. Within the first year, he explained, the company should know whether they are on track to meet that benchmark. Jet is also going to be embarking on a massive marketing push timed for launch. The company will be spending $100 million of its war chest on marketing in the coming year, including TV commercials to air in September.
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