MovieChat Forums > E-Dreams (2001) Discussion > I saw Kosmo

I saw Kosmo

posted 15 years ago by OrangeCatholic
2 replies | jump to latest

I briefly interviewed with Kosmo.com at its height around 1999. Kosmo.com was simply a warehouse full of handy deliverables, such rental movies, more rental movies, and hot pizzas (wait, did they have hot pizzas??)

Anyway, Kosmo's warehouses were divided into two distinct sections, delivery and inventory.

The 'inventory' section was your typical shelf-laden warehouse, full of products, indexed by computer, and run by a small number of competent IT staff. The 'delivery' section consisted of an expensive wool rug, large couch, and a television showing MTV rap videos all night long.

Did I mention Kosmo's trademark was bright orange?

Kosmo's delivery staff came from the ranks of the lower-income folks, that is, nearly 100% African-American men, driving scooters (hence the rap videos). Since the appearance of black men on scooters at 4AM can be intimidating to white folks, Kosmo had their drivers wear bright orange jumpsuits to signify their intentions.

Now, when was the last time you saw a black man in an orange jumpsuit?

That's right, prison.

At the time, Kosmo seemed inexorably real. Of course, it was questionable whether they would make money simply by being the newest pizza delivery chain on the block. But they really did have warehouses, they really did have products and they really could be delivered to anyone, at anytime, for a cheap price.

But in retrospect, by playing the race card so heavily, with their orange jumpsuits, and MTV-centric hangouts, one has to wonder what Kosmo's intentions really were.

[–] Nimabu 14 years ago

But if you saw the documentary then you would have seen how the majority of the delivery staff in San Francisco was either Asian or Hispanic. I think their major problem was hiring too many people to do simple tasks like fixing bikes or delivering the goods, while they spent their whole days behind a computer or making phone calls. What you essentially had was a bunch of geeky guys with long titles that wouldn't get their hands dirty and didn't spend enough time developing a good business model before expanding and hiring people left and right.

What I loved about the documentary was how it contrasted the beginning of the company when everybody was excited and felt like they were part of something big, with how the Company started to change while it became more and more like a business/Corporation and everything started to suck, people were getting laid off and the workers wanted to unionize.

[–] dan-1315 11 years ago

Just wanted to say that I heard one of the founders speak about Kozmo a few years ago and he said his investors pushed the company to expand exponentially, following the Amazon business model to be everywhere at once, because they wanted to flip the company to triple or quadruple their money and get out, leaving others to pick up the pieces. Supposedly, New York was actually making a profit, San Fran and Boston were breaking even, and the other cities might have eventually broke even with time. But the sharks didn't want to wait 10 years just to make their money back, so they pulled their money out and collapsed the company. It's interesting that Amazon and a few other companies now are looking at doing what Kozmo did, that is delivering their products within 1-4 hours to the home. If Kozmo were still around, it might have evolved into a delivery service for Amazon Best Buy and Netflix. It was ahead of its time.