One Kings Lane

Take a peek at a 30 second television commercial from One Kings Lane:

If you watch cable television, you'll eventually see a One Kings Lane commercial.

Do you realize that One Kings Lane has 17 sale events scheduled ... on November 1?

Last week, One Kings Lane sent me 14 email campaigns.  Fourteen!

You can't even visit the One Kings Lane website ... you need to create an account (email address + password).

Did you know that One Kings Lane raced from $0 to $100,000,000 in annual sales between 2009 and 2011?

These folks sure aren't running a business the way they are supposed to run it, are they?  They obliterate best practices.  A digital brand using television advertising?  Spamming customers with 14 campaigns a week?  Seventeen sale events a day?  Forcing a customer to log-in to visit a website?  A hundred million dollars of sales growth in two years ... from nothing?

Did your business grow by $100,000,000 between 2009 and 2011, selling stuff comparable to what everybody else sells?

I've mentioned this to you before.  My favorite quote of all time came from a C-level executive who once told me "we simply don't have anything interesting to say to the customer for the next six weeks".

Contrast that with 14 email campaigns a week and 17 sale events scheduled for one day.  These folks are creating interesting things to say, on a daily basis.

Now, I get it.  You're going to tell me that they are a flash sales site flush with VC money, they have all of the advantages.  Maybe you're right.

But you could execute television commercials, right?

And you could send 14 email campaigns a week, right?

And you could pick 17 items (you have 4,398 skus) to feature each day, right?

And if you wanted to, you could prevent customers from visiting your website, instead forcing them to give you an email address so that you could have a relationship with a visitor from day one, right?

Too often, we demand that customers purchase from us, our way.

Maybe that's why our businesses aren't going from $0 to $100,000,000 in 24 months.

Ok, time for your thoughts.  What do you think about the comparison of One Kings Lane and your business?