given your statement about Prime why did you buy with us? What drove you to make that purchase regardless? >>Female #2: Most times that I buy something on Gilt , it's either something that's just an absolutely amazing deal and the shipping added onto it, it still makes it an amazing deal or it's something that I absolutely must have. Like especially for some cheaper items like jewelry and stuff I just won't buy it because I don't want to pay for the shipping. >>Alexis: Yeah, and that's commonly what we
It's a flash sale website. Very similar to Gilt , because I was really inspired by the Gilt . Gilt was really big back then.
Terrific, Bob's got a fraction of bandwidth left. This is how Gilt Group does it from a recent blog post.
Yeah. I'm actually working on a story about this right now. And I think Gilt does a really interesting job with this stuff. They have a ton of people working on their personalization.
it was our opportunity to just state it, put it there and relay it to a larger audience. Sandra: The Gilt handbook. >>Alexis: At least some of our thoughts and lessons learned from the past five years in the trenches. Sandra: Perfect. And how is the actual book writing process? This is your first book.
it so quickly? >>Alexis: We decided to launch it so quickly for three main reasons. The first was two months in there was a European business that was comparable to Gilt 's who all of the sudden out of left field raised capital at a billion-dollar valuation. We were like whoa. One, that's gonna set off the alarm bells in every venture capital around country. To put money behind similar ideas so competition is gonna come quickly. Two, our business in face of competition I
Alexis: I'm sure they'd love it. >>Sandra: See how people react. So you talk about the thrill of starting a new business, do you still feel the same thrill today as when you first started Gilt ? >>Alexis: I do because our business is evolving every day. So we, a year and a half in, started building our Japanese business. So I was very involved in building Gilt Japan from ground up. I was highly involved in our expansion as we moved into Gilt Home. I was at the helm of the marketing team as CMO when we embraced
when you first started Gilt ? >>Alexis: I do because our business is evolving every day. So we, a year and a half in, started building our Japanese business. So I was very involved in building Gilt Japan from ground up. I was highly involved in our expansion as we moved into Gilt Home. I was at the helm of the marketing team as CMO when we embraced and knew that we had to start investing heavily in data and personalization and mobile as
So as males grow, they become porkers and then baconers. The females become gilts , which is analogous to a heifer, and then they become breeding sows. And breeding sows have litters of about 10 suckers every six months for three years.
capital around country. To put money behind similar ideas so competition is gonna come quickly. Two, our business in face of competition I think those who are familiar with Gilt or are familiar with at least e-commerce or you know how competitive the space is today. Back then there was no one, but we realized, okay, if competition is coming, if there's gonna probably be VC dollars flowing towards the idea in many forms, we've got to scale quickly. And so being out the door quickly and focusing
Alexis: I, well, first of all, I've been a little bit on the venture capital side as this is my third start-up through Gilt . And I think to the extent you're operating in an environment driven and fueled by technology, if you're operating in an environment that is so rapidly evolving as our world is, jointly and talking to the room here. There is kind of two characteristic traits that you need to have. One is flexibility. Flexibility to
it was still close enough to 2002. Certainly no one was investing in fashion online. And nothing got us laughed out of the room faster than when we said that we would get guys to shop for themselves one day on Gilt too. And then they were like yeah, whatever. So it was, then we really thought we'd have to go to Europe to raise capital for this because of the fact we were e-commerce, the fact we were touching inventory and the fact that we are touching fashion, all pretty bad words at that time.
says the psychology of it even though we pay for Amazon prime. Alexis: Have your bought on Gilt ? >>Female #2: Yes, but there are many times that I don't buy something because I don't want to pay the shipping. Alexis: Uh-huh. >>Female #2: Even though you do have free shipping for the next X amount of time. Is this something that ever comes up where you
I could come in, find something amazing and be out in under 5 or 10 minutes. That was the big change. The change in psychology of if I don't get there soon enough and it gets old out, it's not Gilt 's fault it's actually my fault as a consumer. That, that's a big shift, if you went into a store, if you went into Amazon and saw nothing left you'd think, 'oh my God, what a terrible experience'. So in some ways it's worked for us but we know that is not without its frustration for some consumers. And we've had to really address
doors glided apart at my stop. It's a fine edition with the thinnest of paper, the title tooled in gilt on the spine, and a slender grosgrain bookmark sewn in, also gilt . Failure to get the volume into position before the train pulls in means I may not get to do any reading that morning as it's
Terrific, Bob's got a fraction of bandwidth left. And again, from this blog post over at the Gilt Group-- I thought this was really interesting-- they define two types of KPIs-- key performance indicators.
Sandra: Hi everyone my name is Sandra Leung Li and I'm one of the many volunteers that help organize the Authors@Google events. So thank you all for joining us today. Today I am very honored to extend a warm welcome to Alexis Maybank who is the co-founder of Gilt Groupe. Alexis has dedicated her career to building and launching innovative and compelling e-commerce experiences for consumers. In 2007, Alexis along with a founding team, launched Gilt Groupe. She served as Gilt 's founding CEO and today she serves as the company's
The Way Millions Shop". Alexis thank you very much for joining us today. Alexis: Thank you for having me. Do we have any Gilt members in the audience, or people familiar with the Gilt model? So I don't have to give too much background before you get started. That's good to know. >>Sandra: Yeah, I think we have a lot of customers
to speed really fast. I just love that experience of feeling stretched and incredibly challenged. So there is no better environment than the entrepreneurial environment because if I look at the first four months of Gilt not only did I have to do the things I knew, be it product marketing, product development. Thinking about acquiring an audience through viral marketing, social marketing really quickly. I had to learn things that I never knew I'd
Sandra: And have you had any angry e-mails? >>Alexis: Oh never. Well, one of the funny stories that just emphasizes high emotion people have when shopping on Gilt . And this is something also that's exciting because it could never happen in off-line world. Our first moment our servers were brought to a standstill is when we had at Christian Louboutin sale. Or maybe the guys in the room
to sustain in any other environment. But points to the spike in activity that we had and still have on the site today. >>Sandra: So I want to ask you, you and Alexandra knew each other in school. How would you know each other before you actually launched Gilt ? Alexis: We went to college together. We went to business school together. We became very much glued at the hip. We had talked about ideas in business school we wanted to
So I was there last night. like a Kevin Ryan, who started DoubleClick, who then went on to create Gilt and a bunch of other companies, along with other people.
Buried among the printed material was one work that caught his eye, a Koran from the 17th century. He looked through it carefully, noting the delicate Maghrebi letters, the fragile gilt that caught the late afternoon light filtering through the tent flap. It was, Haidara realized, a masterpiece.
I am very honored to extend a warm welcome to Alexis Maybank who is the co-founder of Gilt Groupe. Alexis has dedicated her career to building and launching innovative and compelling e-commerce experiences for consumers. In 2007, Alexis along with a founding team, launched Gilt Groupe. She served as Gilt 's founding CEO and today she serves as the company's chief strategy officer. Alexis holds a BS and an MBA from Harvard University and is actively involved in the Robin Hood Foundation. She currently mentors many emerging entrepreneurs
chief strategy officer. Alexis holds a BS and an MBA from Harvard University and is actively involved in the Robin Hood Foundation. She currently mentors many emerging entrepreneurs in both the technology and fashion sectors. Along with her fellow co-founder, Alexandra Wilkins Wilson, Alexis recently released "By Invitation Only: How We Built Gilt And Changed The Way Millions Shop". Alexis thank you very much for joining us today.
something I've been tasked to do and how can I think about it differently? So we took these questions that we would get asked so often, the kind of common interest in, and also the story of Gilt as kind of a fun story in many ways. And we wanted to just take a moment to document it and reflect on our past five years and a situation that's been one of the fastest-growing businesses in recent memory. And just documented. You
sometimes weeks. From idea to launch. And so when we spoke to the three publishers that approached us to do this project, and they said it would take two years we really almost fell, I think both of our mouth fell open at the same time. You know two years, it took us four months to get Gilt up and running. But it was a two-year project, we ended up using every single moment because we had full-time jobs so it was the Thursday morning we met regularly every week and then the weekends that we would spend working on this. And it
brainstorming sessions where we would kind of record a moment and flesh out down to okay well what was the color of the room we were walking into? We were really trying to flesh out our memories in certain instances that were formative in the Gilt experience. And given it's a big challenge tying together a point of view of two people, we actually brought on board an editor to help tie together the voice and the thought process and to have
given it's a big challenge tying together a point of view of two people, we actually brought on board an editor to help tie together the voice and the thought process and to have it more of a coherent story. >>Sandra: Well, you mention how Gilt was launched in only four months. I wanted to touch on that more, why did you guys decide to launch it so quickly? >>Alexis: We decided to launch it so quickly for three main reasons. The first was two months in there was a European business that
remain successful. We're not there yet, were only at 1000 people which is tiny from a Google standpoint. Sandra: You're getting there, you're getting there. Let's talk about Gilt , how is the actual idea of Gilt of born? >>Alexis: Gilt was born out of personal interest that I had with my co-founder Alexandra in part and in part through a first seed investor
without over investing in technology, using the Cloud in many unique ways. Sandra: So we love data here at Google, and I'm sure you have a lot of data and analytics at Gilt . So can you see that people are mostly logging in mostly right at 12 PM for the sale? Is that when you see the highest spike? >>Alexis: Well, first of all we call them our shopping athletes. Men are just as competitive if not more than the ladies on the site. But
wanted to work with us because the context their business was changing. Those that were coming into the stores were, tended to be 50 years old or older. They're having a really tough time reaching younger consumers who are increasingly behind flat-panel monitors for 80 hours a week and not spending time in stores. And they saw Gilt as a really unique way to reintroduce their brand, to acquire customers, to even just reposition their brand
might be for them is the business. >>Sandra: Next question. Female #1: Hi, thank you so much for being here I'm a huge fan, I use Gilt all the time so thank you. I was just wondering because I think a lot of us who are here are entrepreneurial, and I was just wondering you're very positive and I love that and I love your confidence and I like your advice. But I was just wondering if there was anything that you or your co-founder
down the shipping by nearly 50%. The truth is that you're always paying for shipping as a customer is just where you're paying for it. In the price of the good or the shipping itself. So we do think about a lot. We're working on something right now that I can't reveal but hopefully you like it. But I'm curious to know when you do buy on Gilt and given your statement about Prime why did you buy with us? What drove you to make that purchase regardless? >>Female #2: Most times that I buy something