Jet.com Turns One

There are certainly no shortage of online marketplaces out there, but only one of them has attached itself to the epithet of “Amazon killer.” For better or worse, that honor over the last 12 months has gone to Jet.com, and as it celebrates its first birthday, it might also be time to take stock of the appropriateness of that nickname.

In an interview with Internet Retailer, Jet Chief Revenue Officer Scott Hilton lauded his company’s performance over the first year in operation, citing specifically the surpassing of $1 billion in gross merchandise value and increasing its funding to about $565 million. Jet is planning on celebrating its first anniversary with 11 days of deals that, while not approaching Amazon’s Prime Day in quantity or quality, should drive some traffic to the site.

It’s all part of a second-year strategy that, Hilton explained, should see Jet branch out into other retail markets.

“Because it’s only been our first year, we did a fairly vanilla-flavored eCommerce site,” Hilton told Internet Retailer. “We didn’t put a lot of bells and whistles on the experience. Over the next year, we’ll be diving into a more specialty experience by category, just making sure we’ve got all the right attributes and filters. In the automotive space, we don’t have any fitment data for people who are trying to find products for their cars. In automotive, you need fitment data.”

While pundits might be split on Jet’s overall performance in its first year, the company is committed to increasing the consistency of its offerings, especially in comparison to other larger sites out there. Since launch, Jet has added about 2 million products to its site, and if it’s ever going to get to scale, it might need an even bigger selection to catch more consumer fish.