Joyus SWOT Analysis and Market Opportunity

As promised in Tuesdays post here is my expansion on Dan Primack's article about Joyus, specifically his Pros and Cons, by creating a SWOT analysis and going through a simple Market Opportunity exercise.  For those that don't want to read his article, Joyus is a QVC (TV's home shopping network) meets eCommerce meets social experience in home shopping.  The startup will produce ~4 minute infomercials for women-focused consumer products and distribute them on their website where viewers can purchase the item.  Joyus expects to charge a fee for producing the videos and will earn a share of the revenue from sales.  Most of my information for this exercise is from Dan's article as well as the NY Times and Media Beat which all appear to be working off the same press release.  Unfortunately, I haven't had the pleasure of using the platform myself after determining it wasn't worth registering for their Beta (Sorry Joyus not sure I'm in your demographic).  


The SWOT analysis is my interpretation of Dan's Pros and Cons as well as some additional comments I pulled from the article.  Embedding the full Doc was a mess (Not an HTML expert) so I decided to load an image while providing a link to the original Google Doc:  

While Joyus clearly benefits from the first mover advantage, their biggest obstacle (like any consumer web brand) will be acquiring customers.  How efficiently they execute a customer acquisition strategy will ultimately determine their success as this is clearly an idea that could be replicated by new competitors and more importantly existing eCommerce heavy weights.  Their women-focused niche is a crowding space and rest assured Gilt Group and the like will follow shortly if online infomercials are what the game has been missing.  


So how big of a market are we talking here?  According to Forrester Research, online retail sales should hit $279B by 2015 in North America.  The next question is what percentage of the market results from the sale of clothing and clothing accessories?  The 2011 Statistical Abstract published by the US Census Bureau estimates that figure to be ~16% of eCommerce retail sales in 2008 which puts the market at $44.6B in 2015 if that percentage holds constant.  Now what percentage of that market can be attributed to women and what is a realistic estimate for Joyus' market share?  (This is the part of my analysis that is less rigorous/precise)  Finding these figures is surprisingly more difficult than I would have expected.  Utilizing a study of internet viewing habits by ComScore, we can see that women visit Beauty/Fashion/Style websites at a ratio of 1.55:1.  If time spent is proportional to dollars spent (No statistics to validate this hunch), than the Women's market is approximately $27.13B.  If Joyus captured 1% of the market for women's online sales (seems reasonable) they'd be achieving annual sales of $271M in this market.  


Seems reasonable for a $7.3M venture investment.  Now its time for Joyus to execute.