The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
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P&G and Kimberly-Clark initially refused to sell to Diapers.com
“Procter & Gamble and Kimberly Clark, the two big diaper manufacturers that make Pampers and Huggies, they refused to sell us diapers. They said they just don't want to waste their time on a business that's never going to work.”
Founders should solve customer love first and unit economics later
“The learning, you know, just, and it still stands today, it's the idea that as long as customers love the service, and they're repeating, and they give you good marks, that you had something. You had something that was valuable. You had a brand, and there was …”
Lore: Customer love and retention matter more early than unit economics
“It's the idea that as long as customers love the service, and they're repeating, and they give you good marks, that you had something. You had something that was valuable. You had a brand, and there was lots of ways to solve the economics, is what we thought a…”
Lore: Amazon's 30% diaper price cut was unprecedented in retail history
“It was unheard of at the time, you know, the idea that a commodity product that already lost money, it's already a loss leader, that you would lose another 30%. That's unheard of, unprecedented in the history of retail.”
Diapers.com profited by cross-shipping items in the empty space of diaper boxes
“But you could make money, because the way shipping works is, if you're shipping a box of diapers to someone, and you have empty space in that box, the marginal cost to ship the next thing you put in the box is very, very small, very low. Like, it might be, you…”
Lore and co-founder didn't celebrate selling Diapers.com to Amazon
“We had a big vision for what we wanted to accomplish, and it was cut short. So, yeah, it was, I mean, you would think after a sale like that, we made, obviously, a lot of money, me and my co-founder, but we said, do you want to celebrate? You want to go grab a…”
Lore: Dimensional shipping makes basket-building incremental margin highly profitable
“The way shipping works is if you're shipping a box of diapers to someone and you have empty space in that box, the marginal cost to ship the next thing you put in the box is very, very small, very low. Like it might be, you put something that weighs a pound in…”
Lore: Diapers.com hit $11M in revenue with only three employees
“At eleven million in sales, it was basically just me and Vinny, and we hired another woman to, like, help us with customer care, and some of the fulfillment, but we got up to eleven million in sales with two people, three people, basically.”