Jet - Club price savings on pretty much anything you buy

For anyone looking to try out our GC portfolio company jet, use this code at check-out for free 1-year membership! >> GC0721G

The venture from the founder of Diapers.com just launched publicly after a long beta period and countdown. Anyone can now sign-up on the site. They're also apparently trying to raise at a $3billion valuation. The site wasn't supposed to launch until today at 6am EST, but it seems to be live slightly early.

Hi all. Been using this service since the start of beta. I am a recent suburb (with 2 kids) transplant in a house outside NYC. For my use case, it's a perfect fit. In my mind, Jet replaces Costco/BJ's at comparable prices for household items, and consistently beats Amazon on them. If you don't need immediate delivery. If you don't want to go to a Wal-Mart/Costco. If you don't need to return things like toilet paper. If you have room to keep 50 rolls of paper towels...these are all good reasons to use jet.com. I don't know about you, but I don't ever want to go to a box store ever again, and clearly Lore, being at Amazon, recognized a use case not being fulfilled. My wife went to Costco once and texted me from the line about how much it sucked. We just don't have time for it. Now all that being said, I don't know how this scales. Some of those orders came with receipts from the local retailers that fulfilled them. That's their model. Here is an example illustrating that: I bought an item for $5 that was $7 on Amazon. The receipt was from Staples...with their S&H, that price was over $11. Someone paid this. It wasn't me. I have saved $173 on 5 orders so far, which was nearly all household items, though I even bought drumsticks for $1 less than Amazon as well. I can attest to that savings, as I compared every item to Amazon when shopping. I can't say about Costco or Wal-Mart, because I hope never to have to go to those to see. However, in the long run, I don't know how this beats Amazon. As long as Amazon sticks with a tech strategy around internet-enabled things and drone delivery and so on, household appliances will know when these things are needed (eventually). I actually really liked the "I need more Tide" button that Amazon introduced, and most people thought it was a prank (is it? I don't know. I'd use that for sure). Brands should love it too...the only way brands can save themselves in this new shopping world is by being right there at the point of need... One thing is certain: Trips to the store to wait in line will die, and maybe so will all the strip malls and traffic hell around them...eventually. I suppose some people enjoy those experiences. This newly-minted suburban dad does not, and someone has to buy cat litter and toilet paper. This isn't a Brooklyn apartment any more. All I care about is price for this kinda stuff.

Rumors were true. Walmart buys Jet for $3b in cash.

I can't use this because I'm not in the US, but can I just say how much I love the design? Wow.

I made GIF in honor of Walmart's acquisition of Jet:

One of the best promo videos I've seen... really nice work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=...

Founder of Greentoe here. I've been following Jet for awhile and have to say it's exciting to see another company come in and shake up the e-commerce space. It's a space that's ripe for disruption and clearly they have the capital to do it. That said, and with the preface that i'm 100% bias, i have to say that what we are doing here at Greentoe seems much more revolutionary to me. I just did some comparing between products we regularly sell and the prices on Jet, we blew them out of the water. It wasn't even close. We are saving people 10-15% off amazon, and the products i looked at had maybe 3% savings compared to amazon. Seems like they are simply passing the affiliate fee onto the customer as savings, similar to Ebates . I think it's going to be hard to get people to change there shopping habits with that little savings. Maybe this model will work well in the categories of cheaper items (< $100) where logistical improvements and shipping can dramatically change the price of an item, but for the higher ticket items, i'm not seeing it. For those types of items, the only way to get a truly great discount is to get retailers to compete to sell you something. But as I said, I'm bias!

Just looking at a product category (disinfecting wipes), the design tries to distract you from calculating price/unit by drawing your eyes to the savings on any item.

The prices on most of the items I checked are higher than my local Walmart (by several dollars an item). Plus, it has a $50US yearly fee. That means you'll have to buy quite a bit to see any savings.

I'm one of the "Jet Insiders" that got access early, and for the most part I'm not too sold on it on a number of fronts. Even with the free trials they offer, in the long run, requiring a membership to make a purchase is an annoying barrier that will be a turnoff to Amazon users and others alike. Trying to undercut everyone and making money solely on membership fees with a business model that the founder stated won't work until it sells $20 billion a year is questionable at best. I'm not entirely sure what problem they're trying to solve here. Their prices aren't that much lower than the competition, so if it's a price problem they're trying to solve, they're going to have to do better than that, in which case profitability will be even more difficult. From my own research/observations, the 3 most important things to buyers are price, trust (in the marketplace itself, in the seller, that they're seeing the best matches for them personally, etc), and effort/time required to accomplish their shopping goals. I'm having a hard time seeing how Jet is a substantial improvement on any of these 3.

Nice to see Jet finally go live. Here's an interesting WSJ article on how they source some 3d party products ( Hopefully this is sustainable for them) http://www.wsj.com/articles/fren...

I've also been one of the early 'insider' users since the early days of Jet. I bought something just to get on their wall, but I very rarely find something priced better on Jet than on Amazon. I'm sure they have a few items here and there, but it looks like they need to substantially build out their supplier base in order to compete on a site wide basis. As a supplier myself, I'll probably try to get on the site, but I know it's a more onerous task than setting up FBA for Amazon Prime. Jet requires an API, which can be a pain to set up and keep accurate when you have multiple sales channels. Any suggestions for inventory API platforms?

I'm in love with Jet. Calling it now--they will be able to successfuuly convert a lot of frequent Amazon users!

Really hard to see the win here, but I'm excited to see some competition. I ran through my purchase history with $AMZN. Out of 10 items, 4 were found on Jet, saving < $10. They clearly have plenty of work to do before those coffers run dry. I feel like it's a luxury being an $AMZN prime member. I essentially treat it as Target-on-demand. I (or my wife) jump on, buy 1 or 2 items, and I don't think about anything more (I find the items, I don't mess with shipping). Personally, we'd get burned on shipping way too much. For the average Jane, I have my doubts on thinking so much when they need/want stuff. That said. Somebody needs to keep $AMZN on their toes. This looks like a good one! Good luck folks!

Are the smart savings already figured into the price or is that only at checkout? I'm confused. If I can save $13 on a $30 item, why are you showing me the same $30 that Amazon is charging, with a confusing savings marker below it? Otherwise, it seems every price is equal to that of Amazon, and like others have mentioned, I have no idea what to buy.

I've been using Jet for about a month (Insider beta invite) - I've probably placed 5 orders. Generally I've found the pricing to be good, better than Amazon. That being said, the pricing model seems excessively complicated - putting 1 item in your cart unlocks additional savings on items that ship from the same location (but no way to really see what they are- you just browse around and random items are 'badged'). Plus discounts for debit card usage /etc. Makes price comparison very difficult, and I suspect will just confuse the less tech-savvy audience. That being said, my biggest reason to use amazon prime is shipping reliability- if I choose 2 day shipping, it'll be here in 2 days. With Jet, my orders have arrived anywhere from 2- 7 days later (and unless I just missed it, there was nothing indicating how long something would take).

$3 Billion dollar buyout from Walmart?! They might have just thrown that money in the trash. I worked on integrating Jet.com's API into a handful of my previous company's products and it was such a painful nightmare we dropped the integration. Months back and forth detailing their errors and lack of documentation to their development team went no where. Eventually I got stuck looking at a bunch of Taiwanese errors in responses from their API with zero help from their staff and no direct contact. Here's a sample of them at their best: They shifted business models from a subscription based 'Sams' Club' type service to these marketing ploys on deals with terrible stipulations. The only thing worth buying here is the small userbase which shouldn't be worth more than five figured. This startup went as quick as it came, at least they backed out. You gave a bad name for startups in my home state of NJ.

If I can plug wikibuy (disclaimer: a friend was CTO a while back), their Chrome plugin is awesome at watching you shop Amazon and showing you cheaper alternatives. Plot twist: About 30% of the deals they found me were from Jet. I've had great experiences with both those companies.

I ordered something recently on Jet. The savings were pretty nice. The shipping took a while though.