What is really behind the Oryx project? Until now the Oryx story is like this: A couple of longtime loyalists to Samwer threw the towel unnerved and searched for potent investors to raise their own version of Rocket Internet.
But since we know that the Otto Group is behind the project - not the venture capital branch, but the corporate business - this story seens not that plausible.
Why should loyal Samwer-people suddenly have a problem with the style of Oliver Samwer - apart from the fact that he scared away their talents with regularity?
And that the Otto Group (beyond eVenture Capital) invests in a business directly, especially with - as rumored by SPIEGEL Online - "a high double-digit million number," which it can not control, would be a novelty.
It is therefore likely that Otto has enlisted the Samwer crew - and offered them exactly the environment, they wanted: What are the conditions you'd be willingto work for the Otto Group? And what is your price? Just like the current self-representation of the Oryx Project: dreamlike conditions, one can hardly wish for.
Like so many Otto did not take the Samwer E-Commerce offensive seriously for a long time. Initially there was a tendency in the Otto-leadership to dismiss Zalando as another Samwer egg. But with time grew the headache. Because Otto is one of those competitors who Samwer wanted to dupe:
"We are coming late, so we need to be the most aggressive, so aggressive that every competitor is surprised because he can not imagine that we are SOO aggressive."
The eye-opener and the actual trigger for the current offensive may has been the Heinemann video. There Rocket CEO Florian Heinemann reveiled Rockets version of modern (online) marketing.
But all who saw it suddenly realized that something more could be behind Zalando than the much vaunted marketing phenomenon. Many underestimated the degree of professionalism at Rocket Internet.
You can imagine how the Otto leaders Thomas Schnieders, Rainer Hillebrand and Hans-Otto Schrader have been pulling all levers in motion in order to win the Samwer crew for themselves.
In an interview with etailment Otto spokesman Thomas Voigt makes no secret of the fact that "the battle for the best people" for Otto was a key point:
"The Otto Group expects solution for the company's key challenges, as we get early access to ideas, promising business models and qualified, entrepreneurially minded talent from business and technology."
The Otto Group is often not what it wants to. Because when it gets to the core business Otto is not able to attract the young, hungry (online) makers, which it so desperately needs. And so Otto solves his personnel problem with th Oryx Project.
In this respect, the Oryx Project (not just for Otto) is double exciting because it is partly a challenge to the Samwer Group, but more importantly, because it is a magnet for new entrepreneurial talent who are frustrated by Oliver Samwer. One can imagine what happens when the ex-Rocket-crew activate their network.
Related posts:
- The Oryx Project: Otto bestätigt Kampfansage an Samwers (German)
- Otto investmant in The Oryx Project confirmed (ecomPunk.com)
- The Oryx Project und die Pläne der ehem. Rocket-Führung (German)
- The Oryx Project turns out to be (ex) Rocket Internet powered by OTTO (ecompunk.com)
- Rocket Internet: Die Marketing-Erkenntnisse in einem Chart (German)
- Samwer Report: Wie Marketing bei Zalando & Co. funktioniert (German)
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