Nathan Baschez is the cofounder and CEO of AI word processor Lex. He cofounded Every, was the first employee at Substack, and co-created Product Hunt.
Inside Overstock’s strategy shift from horizontal to vertical
Geoff Atkinson, the former SVP Marketing at Overstock, explains how strategy shifts can emerge through experimentation
Jan 28, 2020 · 9 min readUpdated Jul 10, 2026
There wasn’t some big lightbulb moment. And there was never a dramatic boardroom meeting where the future was determined ahead of time. Instead, Overstock’s strategy emerged gradually.
When Geoff Atkinson originally joined Overstock in 2005, they were a broad discount retailer that would sell you anything. By the time he left in 2011, they were squarely focused on Home & Garden.
The reason behind this shift is a fascinating case study in how seemingly small details can have a huge impact: Overstock is a public company worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but their entire strategy turned on a discovery that SEO competition was a little weaker in Home & Garden than other categories.
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