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Nick Swinmurn tested whether people would actually buy shoes online by photographing shoes he did not own and buying them at retail only after a real order came in. The unit economics were terrible, but real orders, not survey answers, proved the demand that later raised the capital to build real inventory.
How Zappos Built a Product By Faking It
From Alex Ponomarev by Alex Ponomarev 8 min read
- Order velocity, not stated interest, is what proved the business idea.
- You can test a real purchase decision before you have built any real infrastructure behind it.
- It is fine to lose money on the test itself. The point is measuring whether people will actually buy.
