Costco-meets-Amazon company Jet.com launches

Amazon.com epitomizes a one-stop online retail destination for consumers.

Jet.com is setting its sights on established e-commerce rivals Walmart and Amazon with a proven pincer of low prices and real-time trading to shake-up it’s more established counterparts and give it an edge in an increasingly competitive market.

I compared prices on 20 of the most expensive products within Jet’s cold cereal, water, dry goods and pasta, laundry detergent, toilet paper, cleaners, cell phone and tablet categories. At launch, Jet will have about 10 million items for sale.

Lore and investors aren’t naive about the massive scale Jet’s endeavor would require to be sustainable.

But he adds that “the critical issues will be watching how Amazon and others respond, and to make sure Jet can scale up volume as quickly as possible”, he says.

Montclair, N.J.-based Jet has raised $225 million in four rounds of funding, according to CrunchBase.

As a way to prove its marketing promise, Jet tested its service with some customers who were given early access by showing its prices against those found on multiple competing websites. While Amazon often has the lowest prices, it doesn’t always. Sometimes the differences were as big as $15.

“We have an assortment that’s vast like Amazon’s, and pricing that’s similar to a wholesale store and membership”, Lore told CNNMoney. Forbes explained in February, “Though the company has yet to launch, it has gained a large amount of attention, namely due to the previous success of Lore, who created Quidsi and sold it to Amazon.com in 2010 for $550 million”. That’s slightly less than a Costco membership, and half the price of Amazon Prime. “Because Jet’s business model is to only profit from membership fees, not from the products we sell, all cost savings are passed back to the customer”.

“One of our goals is $20 billion in product sales in five years, but another is to be a great company where people feel connected to the mission”, says Lore, noting that everyone at Jet makes the same salary within each of 10 department bands.

“From our business model to our culture, we live our values to the extreme, whether we’re dealing with employees, retail partners or consumers”, said Lore.

ABOUT JET.COMLaunched in 2015, Jet is a members-only shopping club that gets online shoppers club price savings on pretty much anything they buy.

The company will offer customers goods in three ways: either through sales from its own warehouses; through third-party sellers on its site, such as ASICS or Lenovo; or using a so-called “concierge” service, in which Jet will buy items on other retailers’ websites that it runs out of or doesn’t have.