The second time, about five years ago, my new company was paying to move us about 200mi, my wife was pregnant with our first child, and I needed to start ASAP so a company was paid nearly $12K to pack and move everything. What a freaking nightmare! Things were lost or broken in inconceivable ways and for no real good reason they couldn’t unload on Friday and don’t unload on weekends so we got to spend the better part of 5 days with an empty house when we’d been lead to believe we’d be up and unloaded the next day. And the waste! They used an INCREDIBLE amount of packing/filler material and so much of our shit still broke!
This last time, about a year ago, we just did it ourselves. The last experience was so bad we decided to do it ourselves with a two week old baby and two more kids under 4. Our awesome neighbors helped, my mom drove up grabbed the older kids and they spent the night with her (she lives where we moved back to), my sister in law and her fiancé helped because they lived in the city we were leaving, it was a village effort. It was stressful and tiring, but it was also a chance to really bond with friends and family.
We filled the biggest Uhaul truck with their biggest trailer, and two cars and were at our new house and un-packed in 24 hours. We had literally nothing break.
I would write a check to a moving company for $12K or more if I knew they were going to make my life easier. I’d absolutely rather someone else did all the work, but all I’ve experienced and heard about is massive ripoffs, horrible customer service, and generally unpleasant experiences.
I think in total we spent about $1,500 on packing material and a truck and trailer rental. So we were 1/10 the cost for 5x the efficiency in the moving effort.
When we moved to Dallas from NYC (about a 1400 mile move), we did it with our car and a my then-new pick up truck. I bought the truck in Dallas then drove it up to NYC, loaded it and drove it back. She loaded the rest of the stuff into the car and drove it down. I could have stuffed way more stuff into the truck bed had I bought a Leer cover, but I learned that buying truck accessories in NYC is FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE unless done online. (I also didn't want to spend $800 on it. I bought a soft Tonneau cover from Amazon for $200. Still works great!)
We spent about $3000 doing the move, much of it being spent on new furniture. That same move would have cost us >$8000 with a moving company, and then you need to hope that the moving company isn't shit.
Sounds like their marketing wasn't great or they ran out of runway.
I'll quote the relavant section at the end, but my when money is no object, you usually go by recommendation of friends. At that high of a premium, would you go to a team with good marketing copy, or somebody who has already moved your equally rich friend with superlative service?
FTA:
We considered our second option more seriously. High-end customers understood our value proposition, and we believe they would be willing to pay for it. But as we dug deeper, we realized turning Walnut into a premium service had too many challenges along the way.
The strategy would shrink the serviceable market, and we would also have to be excellent at finding a smaller customer base at the exact moment they’re looking for movers. Even if we solved the marketing challenges, our moving service would also have to meet new, higher expectations. Our concern was whether we could ever deliver enough value in this compulsory experience to justify the substantially higher price.
So they wanted to claim to offer a high-quality product, but don't think they can actually do that.
Startup culture is so terrible.
Consider it the difference between an iPhone and a 24 caret gold plated iPhone elite (which apparently exists)
A truly upmarket experience is a concierge who knows your tastes and scours the stores to bring you what he think you'd like to wear. Just like any sort of suit you can buy in a store is orders less luxurious than a bespoke suit you get made for you on Saville Row.
Take a look at this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/business/economy/high-end...
So high-end medical care is like a really good health plan that covers a lot of procedures. It's good enough for most people, not like the US's public safety net. You pay a little more but the market is there.
The article above is an example of a LUXURY health care service. The consumers really don't care how much they spend, but every time they got the sniffles, they get tended to by the top specialists in the field.
Kudos to the Walnut founders to realize so quickly that they'd have to pivot into the luxury segment of moving, not just the high-end one, as the luxury segment is lucrative, and the high-end non-existent.
Unfortunately, they couldn't cover their labor costs this way. Movers who will show up, take good care of the customer's stuff, are courteous and don't take tips clearly cost more than typical movers who simply provide a pair of strong arms to lift stuff up and down stairs and onto trucks, but don't give a shit about your brand. Normal people use normal moving services who provide a so-so service not because they are stupid but because they don't have the money to spend on premium movers. Obviously customers who got a heavily discounted service gave them five stars and said they would recommend them.
Presumably they tried to interest investors in subsidizing their customers' moving to build a brand. However investors are more cautious now and have been burned on laundry apps and similar. They understand that real-world services don't scale or offer first-mover-advantage (npi) the same way search engines and social networks do.