Jet.com's Marc Lore is out to reinvent the shopping cart

The marketplace site, launched last July to a lot of scrutiny, now sells about 11 million products, from jeans to diapers, from more than 1,800 retailers.

[...] while the goal is to undercut Amazon and everyone else, Jet.com is not a discount site.

Jet.com is built on a real-time pricing algorithm that determines which sellers are the most efficient in value and shipping and adjusts prices based on what items are in the checkout cart, as well as how far the desired products are from the shopper's home.

[...] as shoppers throw items in their cart, they're encouraged to add more to build a more efficient cart and buy items labeled "smart cart" for more savings.

[...] if they waive the right to return an item, a huge cost for online retailers, prices drop even more.

Lore expects the value of goods sold on the marketplace, or gross merchandise value, to hit $1 billion in May.

It's adding about 350,000 new customers a month, with one-third being repeat customers for basic essentials, like detergent, over a 90-day period.

Retailers are fighting just to co-exist in landscape vastly altered by its existence and, as the latest round of earnings has shown, many have yet to figure out a way to do that.

[...] with the online market expected to more than triple in the next 10 years to $1 trillion in revenue, Lore is back and sensing plenty of room for Jet.com to roam.

Three months after Jet.com launched, it ditched its annual membership fee of $49.99, leading critics to question the business model.

Lore says the membership wasn't critical to the business model and his confidence appears unshaken.

Jet.com expects to reach overall profitability in 2020 and to hit $20 billion in general merchandise value with 15 million customers.