PPOD- Analyzing the numbers a bit further...
As of the 3rd. qtr 10 Q, (the Annual is due out any day), they had 98,000 "members". They had 112,000 orders in that quarter or around 37,000 per month. Hmmm -those voracious shoppers ordered on average a little more than once every three months. 7/11 does a hell of lot better than that let alone your average supermarket. Recipe for impending disaster.
For the nine months they had sales of $43,000,000 on 372,000 orders. A rather impressive $115.00 per order. Still the Gross profit before expenses on the $43,000,000, was only $2,500,000. Hence the huge losses.
Now, if they had high fixed expenses and low variable expenses, time and volume could bail them out. However they have high fixed expenses and HIGH variable expenses. Time seems to me to be on the shorts side.
The new annual should be discouraging. Discounting some nutty bail-out like CPQ did for Shopping.com, this will have been an interesting experiment in a poorly researched business plan going down the drain. |
