the concept, the positive response from consumers and product makers led to rapid growth for early players in flash sales such as ideeli. “Smart investors paid attention to that as opposed to the conventional wisdom,” he says.
Skeptics changed their tune as consumers embraced flash sales. For example, New York’s Gilt Groupe, another major player in luxury products flash sales, raised $138 million in May. “Tons of investment is trying to find a home right now in this,” Hurley says.
Now ideeli—with a staff of some 200 and $77.7 million in revenue in 2010, according to the company—plans to capture more market share. Hurley says there is $1 billion-worth of business for ideeli to build based on the product categories it currently sells. “On a run-rate basis, we think we’ll be a $250 million business by the end of this year,” he says. The company declined to discuss profitability.
Ideeli has some 4 million members who seek deals that are available for just 40 hours at a time. Ideeli is weighing new categories to pursue. “[Ideeli is] an effective tool for any market category where people are passionate about the products,” Hurley says.
Hurley says ideeli effectively creates a new store every day with fresh sets of deals offered only to its members. Would-be rival websites might offer one or two sale events per day, Hurley says, but having the capacity to post 20 or more new sales events the way ideeli operates is a task that few have emulated thus far. “While there is an enormous greenfield opportunity; many companies will have difficulty on execution,” he says.
Hurley says the attention garnered by the flash sales sector may attract new rivals, but he cautions that making such an operation successful is a steep challenge. “What people underestimate is how difficult this business is to run at scale,” he says.
Hurley describes ideeli as a tightly built company with personnel and procedures that must move fluidly for the whole operation to function. That means employees at every level of the company must take responsibility for the end product, he says. “Things move so fast; senior management can’t be party to every single decision,” Hurley says.
Ideeli is Hurley’s fourth startup in 24 years. He co-founded ideeli with Mark Uhrmacher, now its chief technology officer. Hurley weathered booms and busts at his prior endeavors, which included Aveo, a computer tech-support service that alerted users to potential problems in advance. Aveo’s assets were acquired by Cyberfast Systems.
Hurley says he expects ideeli to continue its exponential growth in terms of revenue, staff, and operations and fundamentally become a different company. “As big as we are, we are very small relative to where we will be in twelve months,” Hurley says.
