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Case Study 1: Zulily Case Study On November 15, 2013, zulily, a Seattle corporation, issued its initial stock (i.e., went public) at $22 a share. By the end of the day, the stock was trading at $38, and 4 months later it reached $62, nearly tripling its initial price. At $62, the holdings of the company's chairman, Mark Vadon totaled more than $2Billion. zulily sells to mothers: primarily children's clothes and toys, but also women's clothes, accessories, and dcor items. The oldest and most traditional forms of retail. So what is the excitement? Cofounders Mark Vadon and Darrell Cavens found a way to harness information technology to provide an entertaining shopping experience to mothers, one that offers name-brand goods as well as unique and difficult-to-find off-brands and often sells them at substantial discounts. According to the zulily prospectus, 45 percent of its sales occur over mobile devices, as mothers churn through the day's specials while they sit in playgrounds, in cars waiting for kids at soccer practice, or anywhere else young mothers have a break long enough to shop on their mobile devices. The Zulily Business Model Zulily conducts flash sales of children's and women's clothing and other items of interest to women. Sales open at 6 AM Pacific time each day and last 72 hours. Customers find brand- name merchandise intermingled with hard-to-find boutique products. zulily uses the term curated sale to mean the sale of items specifically selected and grouped by its shopping experts to be exciting to women. Because these curated sales provide interesting variety, women enjoy the thrill of discovery while shopping, zulily thus provides entertainment as well as a rewarding shopping experience. And those low prices, some as low as 70 percent off retail, are available for only 72 hours. This approach definitely work and in 4 years zulily increased the number of its active customers by 3,121 percent while increasing revenue per active customer by 209 percent. That combination resulted in revenue growth from $18Million to $1.2Billion; that's a 185 annual wth rate! perc How Zulily Did it? The sales process begins when zulily buyers identify goods to be sold. Buyers negotiate with vendors to establish both wholesale and retail prices, terms, and maximum quantities by size. zulily then obtains sample merchandise and, if necessary, photographs it in-house. It also writes ad copy to be displayed along with the photos during the sale. By taking photos when needed and writing its own ad copy, zulily ensures a consistent quality of presentation on its site. zulily also adds considerable value to smaller vendors who do not otherwise have access to such high-quality expertise. Zulily Performance Items are then grouped together into 3-day sales events. zulily accepts orders for items up to the maximum quantity negotiated with the vendor. At that point, the item (or a particular size of an item) is marked as no longer available, thus increasing pressure to buy remaining items now. After the event closes, zulily orders the items from the vendor, receives them, packages them, and then ships the items to customers. zulily thus maintains almost no inventory. Customers receive their items in zulily packaging, thus reinforcing the zulily brand. zulily is subject to crrors and mistakes from vendors. If, for example, the vendor promises to ship 1,000 pairs of shoes of a particular size and zulily sells all 1,000 pairs, but later the ven- dor delivers only, 900 pairs in that size, some customers will be disappointed. And those customers will hold zulily, not the vendor, responsible for their disappointment. Use of Technology zulily's business model would be infeasible without information systems. For one, it needs the Internet to reach customers, and it needs mobile technology to do so on phones and other mobile devices. Further, zulily buyers use the Internet to find vendors and items to sell. But what else? In the prospectus for its initial public offering, zulily stated, Continual innovation through investment in technology is core to our business." It states that it developed a proprietary technology platform to manage the enormous spikes in Web processing demand that occur due to the nature of flash sales. Reflect on the challenges of such development: In 2010, zulily's platform supported $18Million in sales; 4 years later, it supported S1.2Billion in sales, a 66-fold increase in demand. Such growth would be impossible in a world without information systems. But there's more. In that same prospectus, zulily stated that it has developed "extensive data collection and analytics capabilities that enable it to anticipate its customers' shopping preferences and to tailor the customers' shopping experiences accordingly. So, as with any good salesperson, what you see and how it is shown to you depend on what you've purchased in the past. That same data can also be analyzed to help buyers determine the items customers are most likely to purchase. Growth-Management Problems Such spectacular growth does not come without problems. According to its 2014 annual report, zulily increased its headcount from 329 at the end of 2011 to 2,907 at the end of 2014. That's an 884 percent increase in zulily's workforce in 3 years. That rate of growth is exceedingly difficult to manage, a fact the company recognized. To support continued growth, zulily plan to effectively integrate, develop and motivate a large number of new employees, while maintaining our corporate culture. In particular, it intends continue to make substantial investments to expand our merchandising and technology personnel. Unfortunately, zulily is located just down the street from Amazon and Nordstrom and just across a lake from Microsoft. Finding and retaining) those merchandising and technology personnel in Seattle will be difficult. In its annual report, zulily mentioned particularly the need to hire mid-level managers. Learning From Zulily zulily is remarkable for its spectacular growth, but it's even more remarkable because that growth occurred in a very traditional market. What's more basic than selling clothes to women? Who would think that the founder of a company in that market could tum his holdings into S1.7Billion in 5 years? Or that the company could increase its workforce by 884 percent in 3 years? In the final analysis, zulily succeeded because its founders developed an innovative application of information systems technology. The technology zulily uses is not groundbreaking. The creative genius was finding a way to apply that technology to a business opportunity and then to have the managerial skill to develop that idea into a thriving business. Without doubt, dozens of such opportunities lie in front of you. You just need to recognize and build on them. Answer the following Questions: 1. Go to zulily.com and register. Identify features of the site that make shopping entertaining and explain why those features entertain. Explain why this is important to the zulily business model. 2. Go to Nordstrom.com and shop for children's clothes. How does the zulily shopping experience differ from that at Nordstrom? Briefly describe the advantages and disadvantages of each type of experience. 3. If you were a buyer for zulily, what data would you like to have about customer purchase habits? 4. If you were a buyer for zulily, what data would you like to have about past vendor performance? Growth-Management Problems Such spectacular growth does not come without problems. According to its 2014 annual report, zulily increased its headcount from 329 at the end of 2011 to 2,907 at the end of 2014. That's an 884 percent increase in zulily's workforce in 3 years. That rate of growth is exceedingly difficult to manage, a fact the company recognized To support continued growth, zulily plan to effectively integrate, develop and motivate a large number of new employees, while maintaining our corporate culture. In particular, it intends to continue to make substantial investments to expand our merchandising and technology personnel Unfortunately, zulily is located just down the street from Amazon and Nordstrom and just across a lake from Microsoft. Finding (and retaining) those merchandising and technology personnel in Seattle will be difficult. In its annual report, zulily mentioned particularly the need to hire mid-level managers. Learning From Zulily zulily is remarkable for its spectacular growth, but it's even more remarkable because that growth occurred in a very traditional market. What's more basic than selling clothes to women? Who would think that the founder of a company in that market could turn his holdings into $1.7Billion in 5 years? Or that the company could increase its workforce by 884 percent in 3 years? In the final analysis, zulily succeeded because its founders developed an innovative application of information systems technology. The technology zulily uses is not groundbreaking. The creative genius was finding a way to apply that technology to a business opportunity and then to have the managerial skill to develop that idea into a thriving business. Without doubt, dozens of such opportunities lie in front of you. You just need to recognize and build on them. Answer the Following Questions: 1. Go to zulily.com and register. Identify features of the site that make shopping entertaining and explain why those features entertain. Explain why this is important to the zulily business model. 2. Go to Nordstrom.com and shop for children's clothes. How does the zulily shopping experience differ from that at Nordstrom? Briefly describe the advantages and disadvantages of each type of experience. 3. If you were a buyer for zulily, what data would you like to have about customer purchase habits? 4. If you were a buyer for zulily, what data would you like to have about past vendor performance? 5. In the general course of life, 2-year-old boys become 3-year-old boys, 4-year-old girls become 5-year-old girls, and so on. How can zulily use this not-so-remarkable phenomenon to customize a customer's shopping experience? What data would you need to do this