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• Case | HBS Case Collection | April 2019

  Wayfair

  Jeffrey F. Rayport, Susie Ma and Matthew Preble

  In 2016 Niraj Shah and Steve Conine, founders of online home goods retailer Wayfair, are faced with a decision about how to improve user experience on their e-commerce sites. A key driver of consumer interest and conversion to purchase in the home category is visual imagery, which has traditionally been generated not by the retail channel rather than by manufacturers. Catalog retailers, in particular, are famous for visually romancing the category. As a comprehensive offering, Wayfair hosts over seven million SKUs on its site, so it must solve for the lack of visual assets from manufacturers by generating visual assets of its own. Initially, the company embarks on a plan to produce these images using traditional photography studios and professional staffs, but costs mount and throughput is too slow. Seeking a solution, Shah and Conine assess the likelihood of using technology – specifically, high-resolution 3D modeling from low-resolution 2D images – to address the challenge. Resolving this issue is especially pressing, given that Wayfair has just launched private label lines and a host of what it calls lifestyle brands, which require support from high-end visual merchandising. As a consequence, the question of how to provision visual assets becomes a question of how fast Wayfair can grow. This case presents the factors involved in deciding what direction to take – a reliable path using traditional methods or a risky path using bleeding-edge technologies.

  Keywords: visual assets; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Decision Making; Business or Company Management; Growth Management; Innovation and Invention; Operations; Strategy; Technology; Retail Industry; Service Industry; United States; Massachusetts;

  Citation:

  Rayport, Jeffrey F., Susie Ma, and Matthew Preble. "Wayfair." Harvard Business School Case 819-045, April 2019.  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | December 2018 (Revised March 2019)

  iyzico: Fundraising in Emerging Markets (A)

  Marco Di Maggio and Gamze Yucaoglu

  The case opens in 2016 as Barbaros Ozbugutu, co-founder and CEO of the Istanbul-based payment technology start-up iyzico, contemplates the offers the company received for its Series C round. The case then describes iyzico’s origins and provides a detailed overview of the business model and growth story that led iyzico to dominate the industry in Turkey within three years of its founding. Having raised A and B rounds from local and institutional investors in 2014 and 2015 respectively, in 2016 Ozbugutu believes that iyzico could benefit from another round, this time from international venture capital, to reach its aggressive growth targets. In the summer of 2016, after an intense few months of talks with potential investors, Ozbugutu was looking at five competitive term sheets from funds with great fintech know-how and emerging markets experience. From the previous rounds, he knew that if he chose the right investors—ones who could also act as advisors—surprises would be rare. He now needed to weigh the pros and cons of the different term sheets and VCs and decide which offers to ultimately accept.

  Keywords: iyzico; fundraising; Business Startups; Venture Capital; Emerging Markets; Private Sector; For-Profit Firms; Management; Technology; Growth Management; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Negotiation Offer; Decision Making; Turkey;

  Citation:

  Di Maggio, Marco, and Gamze Yucaoglu. "iyzico: Fundraising in Emerging Markets (A)." Harvard Business School Case 219-064, December 2018. (Revised March 2019.)  View Details

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• Teaching Note | HBS Case Collection | March 2019

  Ant Financial (A), (B), and (C)

  Feng Zhu, Krishna G. Palepu, Kerry Herman and Susie Ma

  Citation:

  Zhu, Feng, Krishna G. Palepu, Kerry Herman, and Susie Ma. "Ant Financial (A), (B), and (C)." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 619-030, March 2019.  View Details

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