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Update on Community Changes

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bshort

Sep 13, 2019

The more I think about it, the more I think this has to do with Massdrop's path to continued growth. I bet that it's difficult to source a drop in the first place, and I can't imagine most manufacturers are ok with Massdrop undercutting their traditional retailers. This most likely compounds when Massdrop is trying to roll out more and more drops. To continue to grow they can try and source larger drops (which must be extremely difficult and exposes them to retaliation from manufacturers), or they can try and source drops across more products (which is logistically difficult and probably carries a ton of risk). The problem is, I'm personally not really interested in their own "custom" versions of products, especially when all they're releasing is headphones, amps, and pocket knives. I'm all set on those categories, and that's not why I used to shop Massdrop anyway. I want to find quirky, awesome stuff that I wouldn't find elsewhere. I want excellent recommendations from the community for products that I didn't know I wanted. Gilt.com went through a similar cycle 10 years ago. The economy was melting down and they were able to buy up lots of high end clothing for huge discounts. Once things started recovering it was very very hard for them to source inventory and it was hampering their growth. They tried to expand into other areas but they ran into direct competition that effectively capped their daily sales figures. For Gilt, the path was to eventually sell off the company at a price that was far below their funding targets. The employees and most of their investors got screwed in the process. If Massdrop has taken VC money then this problem is especially bad, since their investors are looking for continued explosive growth. Once it plateaus their funding will dry up and potential negative consequences will be triggered, such as loss of equity and more control being handed over to their investors. I'd love to see the following plan:

Return the communities that we know and love. Removing them has obviously had a huge impact on the user community and I'd be willing to bet their month-over-month numbers are down and their bounce rate is most likely way up.
If they're having a hard time finding people to run the communities and source the products, then either try and identify enthusiastic users who are willing to step in and help build the community or just hire users who are obviously passionate about certain categories.
Establish an affiliate program. This will encourage more people to link into Massdrop and promote products from external community sites.
Expand the communities and forums by making the user experience better. Clean up the interface. Make searching better. Introduce some sort of flair for users who are engaged and have their comments voted up by others. Create some incentives for engagement.
Create a program for retailers who are looking to liquidate or move their inventories. Make it easy to sign up. Let the external retailers handle their own shipping. Let them set their own prices.
Create a better incentive for manufacturers to sell through Massdrop. I'm guessing their Studio program is pretty popular and profitable, since they're obviously shifting their focus to Studio. To make it enticing for users they need to expand the range of products they offer this way or they need to make the products distinctive in some way.

As it is, they need a better plan. The current state of the site sucks and I don't really see myself using it or recommending it in the future.

(Edited)

reswright

3850

Sep 13, 2019

bshortYou know, that sound a lot like what happened to Rue La La back in the day as well. I don't know about the internal stuff but they went from awesome to sucksville in, like, a month's time, and just kept driving in the same direction.

bshort

Sep 17, 2019

reswrightYep, I think the same thing happened there. Hudson's Bay Company bought Gilt in 2016, and then sold Gilt to Rue La La in 2018. It's sad that great sites like this tend to hit some sort of growth ceiling, but that seems to be the trend.

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