Deadpool: Red Envelope Files For Bankruptcy

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

1. Asad
   

   April 19th, 2008 at 1:28 pm

   If anything e-tailing will be helped by the economic slowdown, as people will begin to turn to it more for savings.

   There is no gas cost for going to a website, and currently there is no taxes, though that could change. People already turn to the internet to find deals and pricing before they go to brick and morter stores, it seems much more likely now that their transactions will also be completed on the internet.

   Amazon is doing something very smart by offering its Amazon Prime service, which is 79.99 a year and you get free 2 day shipping on all products, and 3.99 for next day. This will help reduce the final barrier to deeper adoption by consumers, which is the cost and delay of shipping.

   I signed up for it myself as a trial membership and I am finding more and more uses for it to send me shaving blades and other small items that most would not look to the internet for. It seems highly likely that this was an issue of mis-management.

2. Blowski
   

   April 19th, 2008 at 1:32 pm

   Is it just Chapter 11 (as in they can continue trading) because the website is still live and taking orders.

3. Adam
   

   April 19th, 2008 at 1:32 pm

   Too bad they couldn’t figure it out. I still need help buying gifts…

4. Jollyjo
   

   April 19th, 2008 at 1:43 pm

   Wow…I guess a nice clean site does not guarantee anything.

5. Dave Litsky
   

   April 19th, 2008 at 2:26 pm

   Money Talks, BS Walks.

   /story

6. Dave
   

   April 19th, 2008 at 2:42 pm

   Too bad–I’d occasionally buy gifts there.

7. HA
   

   April 19th, 2008 at 3:01 pm

   Another one bites the dust in ‘Silly Con Valley”!

8. Peter
   

   April 19th, 2008 at 3:13 pm

   It’d be cool if we have a quick, structured way to check which commenters were right/wrong about the fate of a particular company. of course, that would require that TC covered them in the first place. same idea as holding stock analysts accountable.

9. Ryan Waggoner
   

   April 19th, 2008 at 3:38 pm

   @HA

   Let me guess, you work for a big record label…

10. Sean
    

    April 19th, 2008 at 4:16 pm

    If a tree falls in the woods, and no one in the entire world gives a hoot about said tree… does it matter?

11. Sami Bay
    

    April 19th, 2008 at 4:58 pm

    RedEnvelope’s failure is an individual case caused by management incompetency, I believe, not reflective of Internet retailing in general which is thriving by most metrics.

    RE has a great brand recognition and is one of the leaders in upscale gift space so, new owners made a good decision to acquire its assets.

12. Peter Harrington
    

    April 19th, 2008 at 6:08 pm

    How come Red Envelope isn’t in crunchbase?

13. jose
    

    April 19th, 2008 at 6:32 pm

    Don’t think you can say that it’s is in the deadpool. Seem’s like they try to keep it going.

14. Son Nguyen
    

    April 19th, 2008 at 9:21 pm

    I can see it coming as well. I bought an item from them awhile ago as a gift and it was nothing special, either in term of service, quality or pricing. They fit into a very small niche with a limited growth. They do have a decent brand equity though.

15. kevin2640
    

    April 20th, 2008 at 7:49 am

    I have shopped there several times, and while it is a good upscale gift site, I think their custbase may not be a good one for the product.
    With quality products that can be facsimilied easily and sold tons cheaper on other sites, or in smaller storefronts, they might have done better to expand their inventory to include either some cheaper semi-erotic, and maybe even pure novelty products, it might have helped.

16. Kevin Horne
    

    April 20th, 2008 at 9:35 am

    Read the press release carefully. As the guys from Monty Python would say, “Not quite dead yet.”

    “We believe the sale will strengthen the Company and foster a sustained turnaround for RedEnvelope. We expect to proceed quickly with the sale and the related bidding process and that the business will have a significantly improved balance sheet, greater operating flexibility and a path to profitability.”

17. Kevin Horne
    

    April 20th, 2008 at 9:36 am

    oops here is the link for RE’s press release

    http://www.shareholder.com/red.....eID=305473

18. Eileen
    

    April 20th, 2008 at 9:48 am

    they may continue but they will lose the trust of many of their current customers due to the bankruptcy filing. Also, if you look at the company who is attempting to buy them, Personal Creations, it’s clear that they are a rather lower end gift company and may not want/be able to keep the Red Envelope focus on higher priced and more unique items.

    But I agree that the business is still strong (with some challenges to margins due to economic issues) so it could be that their management was what caused them to crater.

    http://www.personalcreations.com/home.asp

19. Boomzilla
    

    April 20th, 2008 at 11:24 am

    Asad: Re: “and currently there is no taxes” - actually a customer of an e-talier will not pay sales taxes only if the vendor does not have a tax nexus in that state. For example, Amazon customers in California don’t pay sales tax on Amazon goods as Amazon does not have offices in California. Amazon customers do pay sales tax in Washington state as Amazon’s HQ is in Seattle.

20. Vero Pepperrell
    

    April 20th, 2008 at 11:28 am

    Ironic… They don’t seem to have any relation with Red Letter Days in the UK, but that was a company that truly screwed its customers over, originally owned by a Dragon’s Den investor, Rachel Elnaugh, and was then bought out by two fellow Dragons.

    Total load of bollocks, they left customers and suppliers completely out of pocket - hopefully Red Envelope will have an inkling more respect for their users.

21. anon
    

    April 21st, 2008 at 10:44 am

    Don’t you have to be dead to go into deadpool?

22. Jeff
    

    April 22nd, 2008 at 6:56 am

    They definately had some neat gifts but everything seemed way overpriced. I’ve started ordering some really unique personalized gifts from http://www.PersonalizationMall.com because their prices are much more reasonable.

23. John
    

    April 25th, 2008 at 9:07 am

    My take is that Red Envelope was too big, and less responsive to fast market and economic changes. Yet you guys are right, people still need to buy gifts. For gourmet foods, chocolates, etc… I turned to http://www. Savorique.com. What do people do for other categories?

24. Keith
    

    April 25th, 2008 at 2:35 pm

    I think this is a company that has completely fallen victim to poor leadership. 3 years ago they had items that were mid-range priced and incredibly unique. I read an article a year or two ago that they had started to lose money and they thought the fix would be to carry more expensive items. That would be fine if the items would have been of more value however, they took the same quality of items and jacked up the price which was completely ridiculous. I suppose they thought customer’s wouldn’t notice?! That coupled with their extremely poor selection of fall and Christmas items last year did them in. Too bad it WAS a great company and a fun idea while it lasted…

25. Kevin
    

    May 5th, 2008 at 2:00 pm

    I like the comment by Eileen #18. The only thing she didn’t know is that the Personal Creations executives know both high end and low end. They ran Hammacher Schlemmer back in the 1990’s and I would say that Hammacher was high end Marketing. An article said that they had an astute group of managers.

26. Jerry
    

    May 5th, 2008 at 2:04 pm

    I saw the website on Personal Creations and thought that they had much more variety of personalized products then Personalization Mall or Red Envelope. Check it out and see what I mean. http://www.personalcreations.com