Rightmove – rated by Forbes last week as the world’s most innovative growth business – could lose its shine and is not innovative at all, a leading proptech commentator has warned.
Its biggest threat could be Purplebricks.
Eddie Holmes said that while Rightmove is widely recognised as one of the best businesses in the world, he does not consider it to be innovative at all and that Rightmove “fundamentally offers the same product to consumers and customers as it did when it began trading in 2000”.
He said that unless it develops a new growth strategy “it will struggle in the future”.
Holmes said: “Rightmove enjoys supernormal profits from a monopoly position amongst advertisers.”
But he said there is very little headroom for growth through acquiring new advertisers – ie, agents and developers.
He also said that even if new advertisers were acquired, “the annual growth rate appears to be slowing”.
Holmes cited a number of potential problems facing Rightmove.
He said: “The rise of Purplebricks in recent years must be viewed as a threat to Rightmove.
“Where most estate agents are customers of the business and are unlikely ever to adopt any other relationship, Purplebricks (or indeed another, potentially as yet unknown technology driven estate agent) have the potential to gain so much market share as to make their own brand well enough known in the eyes of potential property purchasers to draw traffic from Rightmove.
“If the site loses consumer traffic it will be less attractive to advertisers.”
Holmes concluded: “Rightmove is an excellent business which is about to come under serious pressure from multiple angles.
“It seems impossible that it can maintain financial performance or grow in the long term based on its current strategy for an indefinite period. Instead, it should now be looking to develop and implement a new growth strategy while it is in the Innovation Window.
“Rightmove has a golden opportunity right now to develop and implement a strategy that will keep it relevant for another 20 years.
“Instead, it has recently promoted a new CEO from within, a strategy very unlikely to challenge the status quo. We wonder if complacency will ultimately undermine Rightmove’s long-term future.”
The full piece is here – and it is worth reading:
http://proptechconsult.com/2017/05/10/rightmove-the-innovators-dilemma/
The problem with RM is that they are very innovative when it comes to squeezing their customers for more money but appalling at helping the backbone of their customers grow their income.
Optimiser products are a very clever way to keep the elite troops battling each other whilst RM gain more income but what about the small one branch agent?.
The last thing RM want is member unity?
RM’s biggest problem is that they have now undermined many 1000s of small members, who cannot afford to lose business, to the call centre agents and continue to pay their unfair fees so may have to migrate, in ever growing numbers, to their main competitor?
Brilliant time for the last RM boss to bail out?
RM need to consider fair ways to help their members not to ultimately betray them?
Is it fair that a small agent could pay RM £100s rather than £10s per listing?
Factor in one or two lost instructions per month to the call centre agents and is that backbone under too much pressure?
Nokia failed to see the danger of a new competitor and so could RM with PB?
Soon to be the third largest portal in real time listings?
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Not so smart to allow give consessions to your low revenue customers (who are awash with investor cash) which in turn damages your high revenue reliable core business. If RM are not careful they could create the monster that agents created in RM.
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With the shear lack of property available to offer, now is the time to make Rightmove obsolete. We are having success marketing sales and letting via the free online platforms such as Facebook. We also find more are visiting our High Street office purely hoping they find something that hasn’t appeared on Rightmove or Zoopla.
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I agree King Tony
So if you are a hot buyer struggling to compete with other instant alert buyers the clever move would be to register directly with local agents and and build a relationship with them?
After all they are still aware of new instructions first?
Especially, if all agents agents agree to upload their own websites before the main portals?
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Since when is Eddie Holmes a ‘leading proptech commentator’? What an overstatement – obviously made to try and enhance the credibility of a rather mediocre article.
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