EkaLore has been focusing on Aliens for the past several weeks. By Aliens, we mean enterprises that enter a completely new market and vacuum up the profit by operating in a novel way. We’ve provided a few different successful examples using Amazon and Disney, but Alien invaders don’t always win. Consider the recent retreat from home sales by Zillow.
Zillow started as a real estate website and leveraged its position to buy and sell homes. They had capital, they had an intimate knowledge of home prices, they had an audience that was already primed to trust them, and they had people who knew the real estate marketplace.
A combination of rapidly changing housing prices, the supply chain slowdown and rising materials costs combined to turn what looked like a sure thing into a money losing proposition. This article from the Seattle Times – https://bit.ly/3mGNIy7 lays out the financial side of the problems they encountered. From EkaLore’s point of view, the time frame that Zillow had in mind was not what the market delivered.
You can find out more about our analysis of Alien invaders at www.ekalore.com/ars. Or if you’d like to schedule time with a senior executive leave us a message at www.ekalore.com/contact.
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