
Investors pour $2M more into booze marketplace Drizly - febin
https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/25/investors-pour-2-million-more-into-booze-marketplace-drizly/
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rdtsc
Alcohol laws vary wildly between states and counties. Some places have strange
laws like you can't buy booze between certain times of day or on weekends and
so on. Some force bars and establishment which serve alcohol to have more than
half of their profits come from non-alcohol items. There are places which are
"dry" (more than half the states allow localities to have those laws). Some
tax it differently and so on.

Sounds like overcoming the regulatory hurdle here without doing illegal things
will be hard part of the business.

Notice just the summary of laws:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alcohol_laws_of_the_Un...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alcohol_laws_of_the_United_States)

Now think about the counties and cities having different laws as well.

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tuna-piano
Careful here... like many companies / industries, you should live in fear of
Amazon.

Prime now already delivers alcohol in several cities, providing what seems to
be a similiar service as Drizly. How does Drizly think they can compete with
Prime Now? I'd think selling many products (Prime Now) has to be better than
just selling one. Amazon has a history of destroying competitors (and
occasionally buying them for rock bottom prices).

Competition is great, but competing with Amazon is not something in particular
that I'd want to put money towards.

Here's a CNN writers (positive) experience with wine delivery through the
service: [http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/12/news/companies/amazon-
prime-...](http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/12/news/companies/amazon-prime-two-
hour-delivery-wine/)

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robryan
In Australia we have an interesting alcohol marketplace called Booze Bud. It
is very hard to compete on the big brands that are stocked at the big chains
and basically every bottle shop, which are everywhere here.

So instead I think they are getting most of their business by acting as a
distribution platform for the smaller craft brands, who are sending stock into
a centralised warehouse to sell on the platform.

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qq66
I wonder if the availability of Uber and self-driving cars is a major threat
to Drizly. I assume that one of the big reasons people want alcohol delivered
is that they're already drunk and can't drive to get more.

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skrebbel
I can't precisely articulate why, but this sounds a bit to me like what people
said about Amazon when they started: An online bookstore? The whole point of
the information superhighway is that there's endless information available.
People are going to stop buying books altogether!

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Scoundreller
Coming to Pennsylvania in 2043.

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graupel
Right after the launch in Utah. :)

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maxander
I suspect a barrier to growth for this company is just that lots of people
don't even know such a thing is legal. I'm astonished to find out that my
hometown Boston allows it, and apparently that's where Drizly started up.

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alaskamiller
Lol, tons of people know about this or want this. Unlike food, alcohol and
marijuana or flowers are the only local delivery products that have wide
enough margins to fund the logistics of that pesky ~$7 fixed labor cost.
Fetching a $8 dollar burrito that ends up being $15 is just silly.

Back in the dot com days you would just call up Kozmo (the original Postmates)
to deliver you whatever booze you want. Most high volume shops in a major
metro area offer delivery. San Francisco has dozens, just yelp it.

On top of that there are ten copycats already, each covering different
markets. They all offer the same app experience, they all work similar
vendors. The only differentiator is marketing and branding. They're all vying
for the same oxygen to burn until they run out of cash. And since the tech is
commoditized down to just a few grand to build out, there's no intrinsic
value, team value, product value, or any value if they don't make it.

What's been tough has alcohol by mail, which indeed is illegal in many states
and is highly legislated. Turns out the USPS as the platform model is only
workable for candy in a subscription box or underwear in a subscription box.

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petra
>> pesky $7/hr labor.

Well the end goal of this should be a central warehouse(maybe run FBA style,
maybe even hired on demand,inc. fullfilment from someone ) , and instead of
ordering being on-demand, set up time windows, each at a certain area,
enabling optimized routes(and on top of that network do on-demand orders).

That should reduce costs to minimum and build a somewhat defensible
business(unless Amazon attacks).

And having a lot of customers will be helpful in achieving those goals, so
what we're seeing is just step 1.

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alaskamiller
No, the end goal is a box with wheels or a drone. What you described is called
a _store_. Also, US is behind the curve. In China the practice is called O2O--
online to offline. Buy anything you want and the closest inventoried item near
you gets to you.

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maxander
Wait, so _this_ is what those silly amazon "Prime Air" delivery drones were
really about. It makes sense now! I wonder whats holding up the final reveal
of the flying booze\weed delivery shop.

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alaskamiller
The future is shining so bright

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lojack
Hi Windex

