First came books, compact discs, tickets, toys and movies.
Now comes the next hot retail category to be peddled on the World Wide Web kitchenware. At least that’s the hope of Pasadena start-up Cooking.com.
The company, founded by a pair of former Walt Disney Co. executives, is the latest venture to emerge from entrepreneur Bill Gross’ Idealab! incubator. On Sept. 21, the company plans to launch a Web site that will offer everything from kitchen appliances to tableware to specialty foods.
The site is billed as a one-stop shopping center for food aficionados, a virtual gathering spot where foodies can browse recipes, swap entertaining tips, chat with celebrity chefs and, of course, spend lots of money on pots, pans, appliances and the like.
“Everybody needs to eat,” says David Hodess, president and chief executive of the 7-month-old company. “People know they have to buy blenders, knives, cookbooks. That’s a really basic activity. We’re just going to take a new distribution angle on it.”
Cooking.com intends to do for food retailing what Amazon.com has done for books and eToys has done for toys. The site offers a catalog of about 800 different products, including cookware, tableware, cookbooks and hard-to-find specialty foods, as well as extensive product information and Hodess plans to nearly double the number of items by Christmas. Thanks to the reduced overhead of selling online, Hodess boasts that prices will be competitive with mass marketers like Macy’s and considerably less than specialty outlets like Williams-Sonoma Inc.
“Some people will come to us because they want to shop for something or purchase a gift,” said Hodess. “For others, the predominant use will be to check out recipes, get advice, or read the interviews with chefs. But hopefully, those people, when they need to buy something, will think of us.”
U.S. consumers spent $14 billion on cookware, tableware, cookbooks and specialty foods last year, Hodess says. But not much of that was spent in cyberspace.
“There are a ton of passionate people online looking for a place to congregate and buy hard-to-find items,” said Maria Kadison, an online retail analyst at Forrester Research. “It seems like a great market to me.”
Kadison said her bullishness is fueled by Cooking.com’s association with Bill Gross’ Idealab! and that incubator’s recent e-commerce venture, eToys, which has proven successful.
“It lends a flavor of credibility to what they’re doing,” she said. “Doing online commerce well is very difficult. The fact that Cooking.com can feast right off the experience of eToys is a significant advantage.”
In fact, Hodess might never have launched Cooking.com were it not for the experience of eToys and its chief executive, Toby Lenk, with whom Hodess worked at Disney’s strategic planning unit.
After seeing Lenk’s success, Hodess, who headed international business development for The Disney Store, became intrigued with trying something more entrepreneurial himself. Lenk introduced Hodess to Bill Gross, and the two decided that cooking was an excellent category to pursue.
Hodess tapped Tracy Randall, another Disney colleague who launched The Disney Store Online, to help get the venture going. The company now has about 15 employees, including five who also defected from Disney.
Since March, Cooking.com has raised about $2.5 million in venture capital financing, the bulk of it from Idealab! Capital Partners (a Gross-supported venture capital firm) and DynaFund Ventures, the Torrance-based fund that also provided seed funding to eToys.
