eCost compares itself to Overstock.com (quotes from the conf call)

Here's how eCost CEO Adam Shaffer compared his company's strategy to Overstock's during his Q4 earnings conference call:

We like that the refurbs and closeouts bring in the masses because of the prices, they get great deals. It makes them come to a site more often. But when we sell the new, latest, greatest stuff, that's how we get them to come back time and time again. We're a regular supplier of all their products.

… I look at our metrics and I look at their [Overstock.com's] metrics. And, you know, they're spending more money on advertising as a percent of sales. They're actually spending more money to acquire customers than they have in the past. So with the TV advertising, I imagine it's helping them build their brand, but it's also costing them. And it comes back to can they earn that money back over time from those customers? We have been fortunate enough to really focus outside of this television or mass media programs to be more direct, drive our cost of acquisition down, and try and create a world were, if we can have a gross margin per order spread that's higher than our cost to acquire, we start at a much better point in exploiting that customer.

(Quotes from the CCBN StreetEvents transcript.)