Boo.com Back in 2007, Maybe
Michael Arrington
47 comments »
Boo.com, one of many poster-children for the dot-com boom of the nineties, has been threatening to re-launch for the last year or so. Mike Butcher at TechCrunch UK says that the site is now scheduled to debut in 2007, barring any further delays.
Mike also gives some background on version 1.0 of Boo.com, which lasted all of six months:
In 1999 Boo.com, a fashion retail site, burnt through $120 million in six months, in part because it’s call centre was situated in London’s fashionable Carnaby Street, as opposed to a cheaper location. The web site was also built by three different development teams spread across the globe, while it’s home page was notorious for its slow load time and use of - then less common - Flash.
Founded by Ernst Malmsten, Kajsa Leander and Patrik Hedelin, Boo.com’s largest backer was Omnia, a fund backed by members of Lebanon’s wealthy Hariri family, which put nearly $40 million into the company. Over 400 staff and contractors were made redundant when Boo went into receivership in May 2000.
For those who are really interested in finding out who’s behind Boo.com this time around, John Collins did some digging into the domain name and found that it is registered to a “woman living in the leafy dublin suburb of ranelagh [in Ireland].”
cool domain name, shame that it has not got any contents yet!
We knew Sinead Mooney’s name on the Channel9 forums early this morning.
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://boo.com
Boo was the first attempt at the dynamic Web - unfortunately, it came in an era of 56k Modems and Windows 2000 and 166mhz PCs
Flash was not yet replaced DHTML - and Java Applets were still king
Boo will be welcomed this time - in the new Web 2.0, broaband and 2ghz pc world
If they had only timed their announcement to Halloween
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Boo was the first attempt at the dynamic Web - unfortunately, it came in an era of 56k Modems, Windows 2000 and 166mhz PCs
Flash was not yet replaced Unpredictable DHTML - and Java Applets were still the only other resource
Boo will be welcomed this time - in the new Web 2.0, broaband and 2ghz pc world
If they had only timed their announcement to Halloween
I remember looking at the original boo.com and thinking the following: “It’s pretty cool,” “I wish it had bigger/better pictures of the merchandise,” and “I would never pay that for that, especially without really being able to see it first.”
I hope they do better this time around but I don’t know. Also, it’s scary to see these companies from the first bubble trying again, it makes me think that this bubble may pop dramatically like the last one did.
Yes, boo is back with more money to throw away.
You know its a bubble when failed companies of the past are resurfacing….
Interesting. I have never heard of them and know the retail space well, so it’s great to know. I think it’s sexy that it’s in the UK - it’s very underserved, a lot of people in Europe say there’s little online shopping available and few U.S. based retailers ship to Europe. Somebody smart could do well. And expand maybe to Russia, which I guess is having a huge fashion boom right now.
But blowing through that much money in six months is a little scary.
They were one of the 51 companies profiled in http://www.whysmartexecutivesfail.com . Good reading. May they not repeat their sins of the past.
If this isn’t a sign of a web 2.0 bubble, I don’t know what is. Oh wait, maybe if someone bought back the pets.com name from petsmart and brought back the sock puppet … I’ll wait until then to pull my money out
The book Boo Hoo is a fascinating read.
why won’t this site/brand just stay dead.
ack.
If its the same team, I am not sure if its a right decision to open again
pat #7…
your statements are simply confirmation that hype is alive.. and that this generation thinks/knows that they’ve created the next great thing, and that it’s different this time…
time will tell.
“Hype is alive…”
That must be the greatest copywriting secret of all! Boo.com is sure to get massive press coverage.
Perhaps Boo.com’s return will inspire others to resurrect the dot com graveyard. And with venture capitalists willing to dish out millions so easily, you can’t be too surprised.
On another note, I’m just waiting to see when the crap hits the fan, and it will. Just be sure to have an umbrella!
Say No to Crack: I agree. While arguments can be made that the timing wasn’t right the first time, which may have some validity, why you would resurrect something that was so poorly run and represents all that went wrong with Bubble 1.0 is beyond me, and if there is serious money backing this new effort (and the same people), it’s not a positive sign. I for one can’t see them having much luck this time around despite the maturation of the market. Ecommerce is not an easy business, and it’s now highly competitive. Just ask Amazon.com.
So this time they going low tech, the jpg on boo.com is massively compressed.
quokka.com can make the same 56k modem excuse. but what about webvan?
Life is getting tougher each day, so is web 2.0. Dun put pressure on a guy who just did a heart bypass, same goes for a web 1.0 to 2.0. Once you get a heart problem, u will be a smarter patient, same goes for a bubble 1.0. Wun make it 2.0 after a bypass…
Well Boo didn’t doo very well, but if his owners were Hariris from Lebanon they have bigger stuff to worry about. Wasn’t Rafik Hariri killed which caused mass demonstrations which caused Syria to get out of Lebanon?
@ sam, believe me, I’m the biggest skeptic. I didn’t watch most of my friends lose their jobs and freak out last time and learn nothing
BUT…. Online shopping in Europe IS relatively underserved, there is huge demand for it - I’m not saying Boo will be the one that gets it right - it’s more that if somebody does, I think there’s a market ready for it.
On a side note, there was a great article in business week this past week about a lot of really cool tech coming out of europe. It was tucked into an article about some VC firm - whoever it was that funded skype. Very good.
What’s next ? Govworks.com makes its comeback ?
hmm….. I think it’s time to start looking for a full time job again.
Is there a reason that someone could explain regarding why someone would buy anything from them? With no brand name it just seems to be a reincarnation of a failed business.
Paricia (comments) seems to think Ranelagh, Dublin is in the UK. Dear oh dear. Maybe if she backpacked over to Ireland she’d find out more about who’s behind new boo.
The brand and rights were sold like the rest of the company’s assets. Chairs, tables, etc were auctioned at ridiculous prices.
A brand alone does not make an ecommerce company. They might have a headstart when starting operations but like any other company operating in the online retailing space, they’ll need to invest in brand awareness, traffic and merchandising. Sourcing products for a startup will be expensive. Besides, why assume they’ll be an online retailer this time around?
Well, they’ve gotta relaunch. I imagine they have spent quite a bit to begin revamping the site.
These folks dont stand a chance. Unless theyre integrating innovative tech(eg, visual search -like, custom 3-d views) how are they differentiating themselves other than brand name. And if it’s headed by the same folks you know we’re in bubble if VCs think this pig will fly.
As for appealing to the Euro mkt, ecommerce is just not attractive culturally. People there, are by and large, more fashion conscious(men&women) than their American counterparts. They like shopping, not just to try on, but as a social event-to see and be seen.
So in the end, Europe as an untapped e-commerce mecca just ain’t going to happen unless there is a sea-change in cultural attitudes and type-A work ethic.
http://www.yook.com sells high fashion online, really successfully. The site in based in Italy, but has nearly worldwide distribution.
They have great service: I bought several times from them, and never had a problem.
back then we had a profitable ecommerce site called netsetgoods.com focused on a similar niche, BUT we knew that the v1.0 boo was all hype and no substance. the fact that they rented offices in Carnaby as well as here in NYC where they blew tons of money on office build-outs, overstaffing, over programming and not on their products and apparel lines etc….was a complete joke. who will run the new venture? they don’t stand a chance…..
Wow, what an awesome three-letter domain name!
It’s too simplistic to say the model failed the first time, so it’s going to fail again. Let’s face facts, when boo was operational originally e-commerce was only just taking off and certainly very few people were interested in shopping for fashion online. That’s slowly changing. I love fashion, I enjoy the convenience of shopping online, and the technology is now there to make shopping for fashion products more appealing. I’ve been left very frustrated by the lack of quality merchants with a wide range of items that can be bought online. Yoox.com (from Italy) is one of the few really decent sites. But their interface is a pain in the ass to use.
Boo could succeed a second time around. But the company has to be managed very differently than the first failed attempt. Focus needs to be building a great brand and loyal ustomer-base organically through deep product range, great easy-to-use website and fantastic customer service. Not pouring through tens of millions of dollars of investors money with flashy gimmicks, expensive advertising campaigns and lack of focus on building the core business.
I’m assuming it is possible to get the manufacturers to permit a large range of current products to be sold online, based on Yoox, and therefore believe a company could now succeed with a venture of the kind Boo.com embarked on years ago.
i would love a 3d fashion site shopping site. i would love a site that allows you to enter a picture of any fashion item from any retailer, an outfit from my site stylediary or whatever, and it’ll simulate what it would look like in 3d. that’d be excellent.
I say BOOOOOOOOOOO
THIS IS SO YESTERDAY! 120 MILLION IN SIX MONTHS! IS THAT POSSIBLE??
hopefully they will spend less this time around!
Is boo 2.0 - you bet! The new boo.com will be all about empowering the user