[slackingoff2017]

There's several companies dedicated to moving ultra high net worth individuals. It's hard to believe there's no market between that and the cheapest options.

Sounds like their marketing wasn't great or they ran out of runway.

[underwoodley]

The service they offer has existed for a long time. Rich people pay top dollar to get good, professional movers who take care of their stuff and don't add to the stress of moving. This company tried to provide this service, but at a lower price, so low that they couldn't be profitable.

Unfortunately, they couldn't cover their labor costs this way. Movers who will show up, take good care of the customer's stuff, are courteous and don't take tips clearly cost more than typical movers who simply provide a pair of strong arms to lift stuff up and down stairs and onto trucks, but don't give a shit about your brand. Normal people use normal moving services who provide a so-so service not because they are stupid but because they don't have the money to spend on premium movers. Obviously customers who got a heavily discounted service gave them five stars and said they would recommend them.

Presumably they tried to interest investors in subsidizing their customers' moving to build a brand. However investors are more cautious now and have been burned on laundry apps and similar. They understand that real-world services don't scale or offer first-mover-advantage (npi) the same way search engines and social networks do.

[jimmywanger]

He mentions that in the article.

I'll quote the relavant section at the end, but my when money is no object, you usually go by recommendation of friends. At that high of a premium, would you go to a team with good marketing copy, or somebody who has already moved your equally rich friend with superlative service?

FTA:

We considered our second option more seriously. High-end customers understood our value proposition, and we believe they would be willing to pay for it. But as we dug deeper, we realized turning Walnut into a premium service had too many challenges along the way.

The strategy would shrink the serviceable market, and we would also have to be excellent at finding a smaller customer base at the exact moment they’re looking for movers. Even if we solved the marketing challenges, our moving service would also have to meet new, higher expectations. Our concern was whether we could ever deliver enough value in this compulsory experience to justify the substantially higher price.

[jblow]

Hahahaha

So they wanted to claim to offer a high-quality product, but don't think they can actually do that.

Startup culture is so terrible.

[Illniyar]

As I understand it, they wanted to offer a high-quality product at high-quality product prices, however if they moved to service the very rich they'll need to offer a luxury product, which would obviously require luxury product price.

Consider it the difference between an iPhone and a 24 caret gold plated iPhone elite (which apparently exists)

[notyourday]

No, what they wanted to do is use a sharpie to fix the the defect on a Louis Vuitton bag from Canal St and offer it to an NYU student from Taiwan as a real thing without realizing that the said NYU student's family has hundreds of real bags.

[jimmywanger]

No, to continue your analogy, they wanted to be the Nordstrom of the moving world, not the Saks Fifth Avenue, not knowing that not enough people would use the high-end but not quite luxury service to make it worth their while.

[notyourday]

That's the problem: Saks Fifth Ave and Nordstrom are in the exactly same market. The upmarket is Bergdorf Goodman.

[jimmywanger]

Well, as another poster already said, there's high-end, and then there's luxury.

Take a look at this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/business/economy/high-end...

So high-end medical care is like a really good health plan that covers a lot of procedures. It's good enough for most people, not like the US's public safety net. You pay a little more but the market is there.

The article above is an example of a LUXURY health care service. The consumers really don't care how much they spend, but every time they got the sniffles, they get tended to by the top specialists in the field.

Kudos to the Walnut founders to realize so quickly that they'd have to pivot into the luxury segment of moving, not just the high-end one, as the luxury segment is lucrative, and the high-end non-existent.