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November 01, 2004
Broad vs. Deep - Ebay vs. Copart
Been thinking a lot about the role of target or specialized offerings vs. big general purpose brands - especially on the web. Everyone talks about the models of the web creating universal portals and market places, but what about also making wierd, out of the way specialized things really bloom?
Recently I wrote about Doug Mockett which is a great example of a niche play vs. Home Depot that really took off because of the web.
Today I want to highlight another, Copart. Copart is also an auction site but it is for cars and car parts. The twist, it's based on junk yards and salvage shops. Sexy, huh? Not quite EBay, but hey, at a $1.7B market cap, it's not bad for junk yards.
They stuck to their customer and supplier set, built a strong network made it easy for these low brow businesses to make money by tapping into the power of the web and to each other. They built a whole set of tools to do this like thier partfinder and in the end they built a highly specialized EBay like marketplace for those who really need to connect to these suppliers and vice versa. This is a great example of a platform play where partners and customers connect in a virtuous cycle of an "ecosystem" powered by the platform in the center. Not bad for something out of Sanford and Son.
Posted by johnza at November 1, 2004 09:23 PM
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