New Business Models - Week 4

It’s been a busy week and I’m catching a few minutes here while the kids and Mom rest from their Mother’s Day lunch to upload my final post and completed tasks. 

I read all of the required readings for the week: 

1. Business Model Generation Read the Section on Patterns
2. "Business Models on the Web
3. Warby Parker Taking Eyewear to the Web
4. Dollar Shave Club: Using old media to sell on the web.
5. Bonobos: From Clicks to Bricks.
6. The Mobile Internet is Changing Brick and Mortar Retail: "Hointer a New Way to Shop"

Including the Breeze session and “The Economics of Giving it Away”.

The two articles that stood out the most to me where Warby Parker and Hointers.

What found interesting about the Warby Parker article was the small redesigns that the store made to  better fit with customer shopping tastes. For instances have all open glass displays allowed customers to touch and try on glasses without having to ask for assistance. I would love it if every glasses place made this change, I hate asking for assistance whenever shopping. I think it’s interesting that just a little change in the customer shopping experience can make a huge difference. It makes me think on my own company and the services we provide. Is there anything my company might be doing that falls along the same lines? A change that wouldn’t cost me anything to make but that would greatly improve the customer experience.

I also found the Hointer video and article interesting. This new style of shopping, having everything see unfolded, displayed, and using your phone to complete the entire process is interesting. It definitely caters to the younger customer, I couldn’t image my Mom walking into that store. But, it plays into the mobile, connected, do it yourself type culture we live in. I think a lot of people are annoyed or don’t want to take the time to ask for in store assistance. We’ve all been that person standing in the shoe department waiting for someone to help us so we can find out if they have our size. Shopping at Hointer you’d never have this problem. It will be interesting to see if the Hointer model can be applied in larger retail stores or if it’s something that works better in small boutique settings with limited product mix.