SFGate: The disastrous rise and fall of a $10 billion Bay Area unicorn
Investors lost everything. So did hourly employees.
https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/rise-fall-bay-area-startup-webvan-19829522.php
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Hasn’t that train left the station–and derailed?
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I don’t remember WebVan. Interesting read. Thanks.
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Yes, huge disaster…billions spent and lost. Here’s the deal, Louis Borders (from the book store) was the guy behind WebVan…and he’s going to take another crack at it.
I remember the WebVan roll out (a lot was in the Bay Area) and local press interviewed an old school, small local grocery store as WebVan was going under. They said they charge $10 or $15 for delivery in a small radius and it was a push, so the margins were still thin. Other experts chimed in on thin grocery store margins and said dumping billions on those margins was a bit crazy.
Then there was the part where many people want to actually see produce and look at stuff. Automation and tech can do many things….but it can’t get around that. I’d call that part of the human experience.
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Web Van sure hit our little town quickly and then it was gone. Their training practices for drivers seem to have been drawn from the “damn the torpedos, full speed ahead” school where time is money and braking in hilly area is unnecessary.
The story has a clear bias. internet grocery delivery is widespread. Most of the early movers of the first dot com era flamed out but some of the survivors became global giants. Look at Amazon and what is now called Booking.com.
What has been intriguing to me is the number of business models that started around 2000 that folded and are now back and profitable. See Webvan > FreshDirect, Pets.com > Chewy.com and Kozmo.com > to all the delivery services that now exist.
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Internet food shopping is somewhat strong in Japan but rather cost prohibitive. Japan has LOTS of “food deserts” where it can be an hour’s drive or more to the nearest supermarket. True, Japan has oodles of convenience stores, but they are usually MUCH more expensive than supermarkets, the selection is quite limited and the true backcountry of Japan has very few of those as well.
In 2012, a company in Tokushima (where I lived from 2009 to 2021) started a service where they go to various supermarkets for you, buy your order for you and when they deliver it, the truck that carries it also has a regular stock of other common items. The trucks are like miniature bookmobiles but you don’t get on the bus. Instead, the sides open like this and sales people & customers gather on the side of the road or in a parking lot (customers don’t have to preorder to buy items to buy from the truck.)
Prices are only ¥10 to ¥20 ($.07 to $0.14) above those in the store. The service is VERY popular and has now spread to many other areas of Japan.
I don’t know if such services exist in the US, Canada or the UK, but if not, I think they might be popular.
Here’s the Japanese website:
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