The Collapse of Webvan | |The grocery business is gigantic, with annual retail store sales that are estimated at $650 billion. However, it is a very tough business because the profit margins are tiny, only 1 to 2 percent of sales. Moreover, the industry is very price competitive. Yet Webvan, which was founded in late 1996, chose groceries as the way to establish itself as a Web-based powerhouse.

[pic]Aside from the tiny profit margin, on-line grocery sales face other problems. Most successful Web retail sales involve delivery several days after ordering via parcel delivery services such as UPS or FedEx. Yet people usually need grocery delivery right away, and the groceries usually include such spoilables as milk, ice cream, fresh vegetables, and meats.

[pic]A number of companies, including Peapod, HomeGrocer.com, Kozmo.com, and Safeway have struggled to establish on-line grocery businesses. Webvan Group Inc. of Foster City, California (in the Silicon Valley), was the brainchild of Louis Borders, the cofounder of the very successful Borders bookstore chain. Webvan’s founders and management believed they could succeed where others were faltering by using a different business model. The company carried about 20,000 high-quality grocery items, including fresh fruits and vegetables, meats, and frozen foods, and delivered the orders to customers throughout a large metropolitan region. Webvan had no retail outlets, but instead it operated out of massive regional distribution centers of about 350,000 square feet each.

[pic]Management claimed one distribution center could sell as many products in one day as 18 metropolitan-area supermarkets. Orders could be entered on the Internet 24 hours per day, every day, and the goods would be delivered from the distribution centers. The company expected to have only about 900 to1,000 employees per center, compared with about