Have you ever clicked on an item at Amazon.com and noticed the item’s sales rank number? The other day I was searching for a book recommended to me and saw that the “Amazon’s Sales Rank” was 159,530. Geez. Not too popular, eh? I don’t think I’ll be seeing this book on the shelves of my local Borders anytime soon. But that’s what I love about Amazon. I can enter any book (CD, DVD etc.) that my heart desires and there’s a pretty good chance I’ll have it at my doorstep within 5-7 business days (1-2 business days if I sign up for Amazon Prime).

Amazon.com is the poster child for the Long Tail. The Long Tail is a “power law” demand curve. For you non-stats buffs, it represents a chart with huge appeal or demand for top items and tails off fast for the less popular ones (see figure 1).

According to Chris Anderson, the author who coined the phrase Long Tail, about a third of Amazon’s book sales are in the Long Tail. That’s enough to make you think how much money the brick and mortars of the world like Walmart, Borders, or Blockbuster leave on the table due to their shelf constraints. There’s only so much space at the store to sell a DVD, right? Anderson states that there are two rules to the Long Tail:

1.) Make everything available

2.) Help anyone find it

Amazon, along with eBay, iTunes, among many others, does this quite effectively. Unlike your local Walmart store, the costs for iTunes to carry hundreds of thousands of songs is negligible. It’s a fact that 99% of the top 10,000 tracks on iTunes have sold at least once. With negligible carrying costs, how can you fail? Post it, make it available and chances are it will sell…at least once.

Figure 1.

That is what we are trying to do at ParkWhiz. Just as the Amazons, eBays and iTunes of this world operate a Long Tail business, we are creating the Long Tail of parking. As the graph below shows (see figure 2), the head or popular spaces are represented by commercial garages, like Standard Parking and Central Parking. However, as we work down the graph, we enter the Long Tail where private parking and lesser known parking spaces are made available to the public. Although they do not sell as fast or not as popular, the accumulation of the Long Tail represents a large revenue base.

Figure 2.

There are millions of unused parking spots across the US, from private driveways to empty shopping mall parking lots to commercial parking garages (see figure 2). By making these parking spaces available on ParkWhiz and enabling drivers to find them based on their need, parking will slowly evolve into a longtail business. Before you know it, you’ll be shopping online for your books, music, airfare, as well as parking. Just don’t be surprised when you find yourself purchasing a parking spot that ranks 159,530.