Market Size
Target Customers
Competitors

Market Size
We estimate the total U.S. market for wedding gifts to be approximately $2.4 billion dollars per year. This estimate is base on the number of marriages per year and the number of expected guests and dollar amount spent. Of the $2.4 billion market, only a portion of that market is sophisticated enough to purchase wedding gifts over the internet. We estimate that market to be $118 million in our first year of business. See table below for more details.

The following are notes on how the figures above were derived.

Total Estimated Weddings Per Year. This amount equals the actual number of marriages in the US in 1994. Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States 1996 The number of marriages in the US has ranged from 2.2 million in 1970 to almost 2.5 million in 1990. The trend has been up and down. Given the above, and the growing US population, we feel using the actual number of marriages in 1994 is a good starting point for our analysis.

Estimated number of guests per wedding. Represents a conservative estimate per personal experience. Note that our estimates considered the fact that a large percentage of weddings were elopements or had very small attendance (say immediate family). Our estimate per traditional wedding was closer to 100. Overall our estimate appears reasonable and conservative.

Estimated average wedding gift price per guest. Estimate based on judgement. We considered the fact that only say 50% of guests actually gives gifts. For example entire families often give one gift. Our estimated price per gift given was closer to $40. Overall our estimate of gift price appears conservative and reasonable.

Estimated percentage who would purchase over the internet. Estimate based on the typical composition of wedding gift purchasers. Based on a recent Wall Street Journal article, we know that 27 million Americans are "on" the internet. "On" was defined as having internet access and using that access at least twice a week. This 27 million American represents approximately 11% of the US population. We used this figure as a first year starting point. During the first few years of matrimony.com we felt there would be limited understanding of internet commerce and concerns regarding security. Many older people will not be accustomed to using internet technology. Therefore the short-term market includes younger internet-savvy individuals. Given the fact that approximately 11% of the US population is on the internet and the other concerns above, we felt that the expectations that 5% of wedding gifts could currently be transacted on-line was reasonable. In future years we grow this number to reflect both the growth in internet usage (we feel this number could approach 20 - 30% of the population) and increasing awareness of matrimony.com. As additional support for our 5% figure, we just heard today (3/13/97) on the radio that a new study has recently been released that shows internet usage by 50 million Americans.

Target Customers
Brides, grooms and their guests are our target customers. Based on data in the 116th Edition of the Statistical Abstract of the United States 1996, we expect most brides and grooms to be between 20 - 29 years of age. There appears to be a "secondary market" market developing related to second marriages where the bride and groom are between the ages of 35 and 44. While the secondary market is significant, we will concentrate primarily on the 20 - 29 year old market for three reasons. First, they represent a far larger percentage of weddings, second, we feel they are more likely to be familiar with purchasing over the internet and third, we feel they are more likely to have larger, more formal weddings.
We have not been able to find reliable statistical data on the demographics of the average wedding guest. Based on our personal experience, we expect that the average guest will probably be slightly older than the bride and groom. In addition, we feel they person making the purchase decision for the gift is more likely to be female.
Given the above, matrimony.com will initially be targeted towards brides/grooms and guests who are familiar with the internet and computers. In addition, we feel matrimony.com will also initially serve as a "secondary" registry. In other words, it is likely that couples will first register at a more traditional retail registry and then register at matrimony.com. Given our target audience and limited resources, we have decided to focus our operations and marketing efforts initially on two geographic areas - Silicon Valley and Seattle Washington. Limiting our initial target customer will allow us to focus constrained resources on customers that are most likely to use matrimony.com. Note we only intend to focus our efforts on these two markets - i.e. we would not turn down a registry from another geographical area. After we achieve success within these two initial markets we intend to broaden our scope of operations and marketing.
We believe matrimony.com is ideal for two other types of target customers. The first is wedding guests who are coming from out of town. Guests who are coming from out of town often have a hard time purchasing a gift using a traditional registry service - as the necessary department store may not be in their hometown. The second is wedding guests who do not live near a department store where couples would ordinarily be registered (i.e. someone who lives in the middle of nowhere).

Competitors
We see two primary competitors in this industry:

1. Traditional retail stores that provide a wedding registry service
2. Start-up on-line wedding services

Traditional retailers that provide registry services are firms such as Federated and Dayton Hudson . Federated and Dayton Hudson are conglomerates that control familiar companies such as the Bon Marche, Macy's, and Target. Several independently owned department stores like JC Penney and Kmart also provide registry services. In this same line, many smaller specialty stores also offer wedding registries. Most of the firms mentioned above have information systems that track wedding registries. These systems vary in their level of integration with other systems within the retailer and other firms within a conglomerate. For example, Federated's wedding registry system does not seem to interface with it's various point-of-sale systems (a manual update is needed). However, Federated recently installed functionality within their registry system so that the different stores owned by Federated (The Bon, Macy's, Bloomingdales, Etc) can share registry information among one another.
Based on our on-line research, none of these firms offered an on-line service to register and deliver wedding gifts (or any other type of gift). Both Macy's and JC Penney have locations on their sites dedicated to weddings and both sites allow a user to query for couples who have established registries. Once you find the couple you can find out what items they have registered for, how many they are requesting and how many have been purchased. You cannot order items directly over the internet - you have to go into the store or call a 1-800 number. While none of these firms appear to be competing directly at this time, they need to be watched closely. All have significant resources and could develop a program that could compete directly with matrimony.com. As mentioned, most of these firms already have their registry data in databases so porting it to the next level theoretically would not be too difficult.
The other group of potential competitors is start-up on-line wedding web pages. There are literally hundreds of web pages dedicated to various aspects of the wedding ceremony. Examples include The Wedding Registries Directory, The American Bridal Registry and Wedding.com. These sights offer up everything from wedding advice, links to other wedding related pages, references on various wedding related vendors and references to where couples are registered. It would be worthwhile to perform some competitor counter-intelligence on these pages and others before committing to matrimony.com.