The irony of Amazon Fresh
So I’ve longed believed that much of the dotcom wreckage wasn’t so much about bad ideas…just bad timing. Or bad fiscal management. The Amazon Fresh launch reminded me of a John Cook article in the PI about some of Seattle’s worst web ideas. One of the companies mentioned was MyLackey.
Now, I ask you… Is it really a bad idea to launch a company that aggregates much of the services nobody wants to do - such as dry cleaning or car detailing - under one brand wherein you get one bill for not doing the work yourself?
It doesn’t seem any worse an idea than home delivered groceries. Funnier still is that both Kozmo and HomeGrocer were listed in the article. Now Amazon is into the idea.
Frankly, I think MyLackey could still work. Imagine you go to a website. Pick your services from an ala carte menu. Schedule them. Get one bill on a monthly basis for everything from lawn edging, car cleaning, errand running, auto detailing, dry cleaning and more. Everything done at your house or place of work. You drive nowhere. You pick nothing up. One company guarantees satisfaction for all services regardless what subcontractor was used.
Doesn’t seem dumb to me at all. Amazon, on some level, seems to agree.
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I think what you mean is, “The need that MyLackey was trying to satisfy still exists.” If that’s the case, then I agree.
As a mylackey veteran (ex-lackey), I can say that there were some real flaws in mylackey’s business model. I wouldn’t build the same business again but there are other ways to attack it that can scale service inventory quickly and operate more efficiently.