Dive Brief:
-
Marketplace and concierge service for tech devices Enjoy is expanding to Los Angeles this week and Chicago in May. The startup was launched last May by former Apple retail guru and ex-J.C. Penney CEO Ron Johnson.
-
An Enjoy expert delivers merchandise to a home, office, or other meeting spot and helps with setup, spending about an hour with the customer for no extra charge. A brief look at some products, mostly electronics but some tech-saturated bikes and other items, found prices to be comparable to places like Target. For $99, tech service is available for purchases not made through Enjoy.
-
Johnson told the Associated Press that Enjoy’s merchandise doesn’t have a big markup because it avoids the cost associated with running stores, and that the past year has provided many lessons.
Dive Insight:
It sounds like Ron Johnson has learned from his time at J.C. Penney as well as his first year with Enjoy, according to reporting from the Associated Press.
Johnson says that he learned to test concepts and wait to see how things go, rather than make changes across the board, as when he shifted from Penney’s tradition of constant markups to discounted prices that saw fewer sales. That sent customers away in droves and eventually led to his ouster from the company.
He’s learned that Enjoy’s customers are younger than he anticipated, that his New York City workers are likely to be better off taking the subway than driving a car, and that most orders require same-day delivery. Enjoy can sometimes make deliveries as quickly as within four hours.
Johnson’s fingerprints are all over Enjoy. The site is welcoming and well designed, with a number of helpful, well produced videos. And, of course, the focus on helpful, knowledgeable tech experts at the ready is a hallmark of his “Genius Bar” idea for Apple’s retail stores. A year on, the startup has added to its product line, expanding to 150 products from 29, including products from Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, AT&T, Jawbone, Garmin, and Apple.
