Jason Toff

Here’s the coolest laptop case ever invented (just ordered it!):

Here’s a shot of a sock I bought today:

Here’s a shot of yesterday’s PennDrinks.com deliveries (we stacked the 39 boxes before packing them). That’s 780 drinks delivered in 1 day!

Since we returned to Penn last Wednesday, orders have been flying in. We went from 12,000 to 13,000 drinks sold in the past 3 and 1/2 days (almost a record*).

That made me think, “I wonder what PennDrinks.com would look like if it were a physical store?” I did some math to get an idea of how busy we’d be these past few days.

Let’s suppose our imaginary store was open 8 hours per day. 3.5 days x 8 hrs/day = 28 total hours. 1,000 drinks / 28 hours = 36 drinks per hour — in other words, 1 drink sold every ~2 minutes.

I think selling a drink every 2 minutes for an entire workday would feel pretty crazy. While Delivery Man Dan might be feeling some of this craziness, I think our managed delivery system is a lot more relaxed than a store would be.

*record time: from 1K to 2K drinks sold in 2.25 days, after the Daily Pennsylvanian article

Finally, the semester is over! Now only 2 classes are keeping me away from graduating. Actually, I’m quite looking forward to next semester. With a lot more free time, I hope to be able to try out some ideas that I’ve been thinking about for a while…

Quick Updates Life-Wise:

Cool.

Another milestone in the history of PennDrinks.com! We have officially sold our 10,000th drink!

We’ll be hosting an info session this Wednesday at 7:00 PM in Huntsman Hall room G86 for anyone interested in possibly joining in our expansion. I hope to see you there!

We have now sold over 5,000 drinks and have over 300 registered members. Now it’s time to find a warehouse and hire delivery people.

Anyone out there interested in a ~$20/hour job or know of any storage places around Penn?

Penn Drinks has sold its 3,000th drink! Thank you to all our wonderful customers and to everyone who has provided us with input to make the site what it is!

Bit of trivia: there are 2 drinks that have been available since the start of the company that we have sold none of… which are these?

Thanks to a Daily Pennsylvanian article, PennDrinks.com has become quite a success already! Over the course of 2 weeks, we’ve sold over 100 boxes / 2,000 drinks! This Google Analytics graph shows the trend of unique visitors to the site:

To give a better idea of how successful the DP article was, one-third of our sales were made in the 3 days following the publication of the article. But to back track, let me walk you through the first 2 weeks of business…

Right after we launched, we did a “free water” campaign, where we handed out over 500 free bottles of water. Step 1 was to ‘tag’ each water with a flyer with a 20% off coupon.

Step 2 was to actually hand out the water on Locust Walk.

After handing out tons of free water, we needed to start filling up our inventory. After not too long, our living room was stocked full of drinks. Once we ran out of room, we had to buy four 5-shelf, 750 lb storage units to help make more room.

Most evenings throughout the week, we run around campus making deliveries. Yesterday, we delivered 22 boxes.

Deliveries aren’t easy, but via our Delivery Manager in our admin control panel, we’re able to manage which zones we deliver to on which days.

Orders continue to roll in– and we’re starting to see repeat customers, which is of course nice. If you’re reading this and haven’t yet ordered, feel free to use coupon code PENN20 for 20% off! And be sure to let us know if you have any comments, questions, or suggestions!

I’ve spent quite a few months working on my largest investment into a business ever (granted, it’s still peanuts to most people). I’m happy to announce that today, September 1, 2007, PennDrinks.com is open for business.

If you’re at Penn and live near the high-rises, stop outside this afternoon for some free water

I’ve noticed a trend recently that has seemed to have passed but has gone unspoken. That trend is the move from software, as we know knew it, to online applications.

When was the last time you bought a piece of software in a box at a store? Instead of paying $X for software on a CD, people, instead, seem to be using online applications that don’t charge a set amount, but make money through other means. Google has been hard at work replicating everything Microsoft Office offers– but for free*. Meanwhile, a slew of other companies have created online versions of applications that were previously found on the desktop (i.e. Flickr, gaming sites, TV/video sites, online address books). As computers and the Internet grow smarter and faster, the need for software as we knew it becomes less and less.

So my first question is: What can be done to improve the web browser experience? And if the answer is “not much,” will Google, Flickr, etc. come out with downloadable software apps that interface with their servers more intelligently and quickly?

And my second question is: What will Best Buy do with all the extra space from the Software section of their stores?

I wonder how much of this is being discussed behind closed doors at Google, Best Buy, and the likes…

*depending on how you see things…