Wrapping his interview with Birchbox founders Hayley Barna and Katia Beauchamp, Chris Dixon tosses out some interesting statistics. Roughly “92% of commerce is still offline and actually Amazon only has 6% of the online.” Dixon says it appears the first online wave of commerce revolved around hard goods (tickets, books and dvd players) and we are potentially entering a second wave where soft goods (beauty products) have an opportunity to claim more of the space.
Barna agrees there is an opportunity for soft goods and tells Dixon that Amazon presents their items “in a nice catalog way” but “being able to bring the content and put it next to the products I think enables new things to be sold.” Beauchamp then compares Birchbox to the retail experience of brick and mortar stores and adds, “we try and take you there.” In the below video Dixon asks Beauchamp and Barna what has surprised them since starting their company – before asking the two to offer advice to entrepreneurs. Barna delivers the first words of wisdom with, “figure out how to test it.” Make sure to watch the entire video for additional insights, along with episode I and episode II of this interview. Past episodes of Founder Stories featuring Ben Lerer, Kevin Ryan and Soraya Darabi are here .
