E-Commerce In China: Amazon Strategy Doesn't Work, Kozmo Does

from the bike-deliveries dept

Business Week is running an article about a successful e-commerce operation in China, called Dangdang.com. When it first started up, its founders tried to emulate Amazon.com, but quickly discovered that it was very difficult to get people to actually pay for anything online. Only later did they switch to a strategy that seems to resemble that of failed (but massively overhyped) dot com darling, Kozmo. That is, they deliver all their products by bicycle messenger and collect the fees cash-on-delivery. They've set up a deposit system to ensure that the bike messengers don't run off with the cash themselves - and say, so far, they haven't had a single problem. It's amusing, because the article never mentions the Kozmo comparison, but they do point out that it's unlikely such a solution would work in the US due to high labor costs.

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