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Well done. I notice that I have to have a specific shoe in mind, and know its name, if I want to get past the landing page. What was the thinking behind that choice?
@stuartcornuelle Hey Stuart! Thanks for checking us out.
The reason we focused on runners that knew exactly what shoe they wanted for beta was because that was the problem we initially set out to solve. Just for context: I'm a somewhat picky runner when it comes to shoes and I had been running in the Mizuno Wave Inspire 9's for years. All of a sudden, they went out of stock in pretty much every retail store in Boston in my size. That was the lightbulb moment of "Hey, these shoes actually probably exist somewhere in the country in my size and finding them really is a technology problem". We heard similar stories from other dedicated runners and so we felt like focusing on this specific segment of hardcore athletes would be a good test of whether what we're building adds enough value to exist in the world.
The word is still out but we've been getting some great traction. Now the question becomes, how do we broaden our product to accommodate those folks who are looking to find a shoe that works or switch to a new shoe!
@stuartcornuelle Imran already answered this, but I'll add that I think we wanted to focus on doing one use case really well first. We're not quite done, there's some data quality issues to work out. But we have planned since the beginning to do a feature set tailored for people who don't know what shoe they want yet. Perhaps that's directing them to their friendly local running shoe specialty store, or perhaps that's showing them the various features of different models, or perhaps it's just letting people browse the inventory, or maybe some combination of all three... not quite sure yet. But I think we'll be working on this over the next few months.
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@rtortora@imrankk I understand. Thanks for the thoughtful replies guys.
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Really nice. I was just going around comparing prices on running shoes. Lots of options out there. Only thing i might suggest is people love to browse. I see the logic behind forcing them to search for specific make & model of shoes, but I also would appreciate comparing, say, lowest prices of all models across a brand. Might allow you to monetize by incorporating sponsored options in the results. Also, may I suggest styling the"The Competition" section on single results pages into a race track? :P
@jason_ephraim great point! We're definitely thinking about ways we can connect runners to other shoe models that could work for them. One of those ways is through sponsored options as you mentioned if we feel the shoe really could be a good fit for that runner. Another is viewing cheapest shoes across shoe categories like Motion Control, Stability, etc. I like your idea of being able to compare across and within categories too though!
@jason_ephraim Totally agree that people love browsing. Surprisingly, the vast majority of people who have visited the site so far have had a specific shoe to search for - I assumed this would be a bigger problem than it's been so far. However, even for some people who search for a specific shoe, I'm sure some of them had to pause, go find their shoe, look up the model number, etc... I've wanted to do browsing since we started, but we want to do it "right" and make it really valuable. Thanks for the suggestions!
Nice! Considering the number of sneakers purchased in my house, this is pretty clutch. What are all of the sources it's currently pulling from? Would have thought places like Amazon have vendors selling for significantly cheaper as well.
Are there plans to showcase the other variations that are at or around that price, as well? Suggested purchases, if you will.
@imcatnoone Oh, ha, you know, we should totally make the list of all our retailers more visible. This is definitely something people would wonder. When you search for a shoe, it does show you all the retailers where we found offers and lists the ones we didn't, but it's not very explicit. Thanks!
@jesse_miller Great idea! Yeah, there are a ton of applications of the technology to other fitness products -- especially supplements.
We're runners at heart and started off building for people like us, so could see us taking on endurance-specific supplements to start like Endurox, gels, etc. If there's traction there's definitely potential to spin off a separate standalone brand in the future.
Question for you though: would you be willing to sign up for a subscription for something like that? What about for shoes?
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@imrankk see my comment below about subscription for shoes. I'd do it if it was smart. My mileage varies widely by season and for other reasons, and I would hate to get a backlog of new shoes.
@chuck_petty Yeah we had similar concerns when we were thinking about the idea of a subscription. What if it was opt-in instead of opt-out? It would be pretty easy for us to ping you every X months with a Yes I'm ready for new shoes vs. hold off. Thoughts?
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@imrankk I dig it. Two-button email with yes/no (remind me in a month) options.
edit: Just found the Version dropdown. Oops.
I tried and most current generation shoes I run with aren't available. I guess that's because they don't go on sale? I tried Bondi 4, Clifton 2, Sayonara 3, and Peregrine 5.
@ayn I see your edit, glad you saw that! By default, we hope (and assume) people won't mind which version they run with simply because they can save more. You can specify which version you want with that filter, but you'll probably save less money. We recently got a suggestion to allow searching for specific models as well as general 'shoe families' from the initial search which I really like, which will help clear up that sort of confusion.
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This is going to be great. Start thinking about other product niches where you can reuse the engine you're perfecting!
@kkdub Thanks Kelly! Yeah one idea we have is using some kind of "sponsored gear" feature as a way to test receptiveness for other niches. We're hoping to roll that out in the next few months. Another thing we really need to figure out is how to drive retention when we explicitly don't require user accounts. We really want to keep a clean and simple user experience. Any ideas on that would be super welcome 😄
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@imrankk Sounds like y'all have things on the run. Many good options for retention but nearly all require that you be able to contact the customer. Perhaps users of your product would register for a "price drop" notification for their favorite kicks? You could test obtaining opt-ins for email, SMS, Facebook Messenger, and any other channels as appropriate. This audience might respond well to a "new kicks" notification when their fave brand releases a new line. Just some quick ideas to get you started.
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@kkdub Agree with your thoughts! Price tracking, new release updates, extinction/out-of-production warnings, etc. would really help with retention. Of course, the ultimate retention hack is creating a social community, but that's incredibly work intensive.
@paul_hq@kkdub Yeah! User accounts are something we want to be really thoughtful with as we think it should be opt-in, not required. As you suggest, we have price alerts available now on the results page but I think we need to make it way more prominent because it seems like people aren't seeing it (our fault!). Did you happen to notice the link?
It's only email right now so totally dig the suggestion for text, fb messenger and the different types of notifications. Thanks!!
We also have plans to include suggested purchases. For instance, if we're saving you on average $30 per pair, maybe that's an opportunity to provide a thoughtful recommendation around some $30 running shorts or other accessories that you might need.
Right now, we also aren't very helpful to runners who don't know what specific shoe model they are looking for. We're already exploring ways to help runners find the shoes that work for them in addition to helping runners who have a shoe find other similar models that work for them :)
Thanks for the feedback! Would love to hear if you have any other ideas or questions :)
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