Boo.com and the causes of its failure

Do you love fashion? Do you love to dress up nicely?

I guess the answer would be YES.

Let me introducing to you one of the FIRST to be the typical scenario for dotcom businesses at the turn of the Millennium: Boo.com

Unfortunately, Boo.com actually burst century ago.

So, what’s Boo.com actually?

Boo.com was actually an online consumer fashion Web store which founded by Ernst Malmsten and ex-model Kajsa Leander in 1998, and launched in 1999 with approximately $125million of funding provided by investors like

Bernard Arnault, chairman of LVMH, Europe’s largest luxury goods group.

Boo.com had not only become the most heavily funded Internet start-up in Europe, but

had also become the most high profile.

All eyes were on Boo.com.

However, Boo.com gives us a boo!

Boo!

So, what makes Boo.com burst ?

1. Problems with the user experience

Boo.com website was poorly designed for its target audience, going against many usability conventions. The site relied heavily on JavaScript and Flash technology to display pseudo-3Dviews of wares - Miss Boo, a sales-assistant-style avatar.

The first publicly released version of the site was fairly hefty—the home page alone was several hundred kilobytes which meant that the majority of users had to wait minutes for the site to load (56k modem could see it without waiting a minutes for it to load as broadband technologies were still not widely available at that time).

Can u imagine people in the early 9o’s, there’re less likely people will serve on the net, or even have such high speed to log for the website. With such high requirement of connection speed, customers tends to leave rather than stay with this website.

2. Bad Marketing

One thing good about Boo.com is that it enabled shoppers to view items in 3-D and to view items in 3-D and gave a distinct visual feel of the products.

Boo marketed itself as a premium sports, urban street wear and fashion retailer, stocking quality products for the fashion conscious young individual.

Premium products = expensive charges.

Normally, customers are attracted to buy over internet is because of the cheaper pricing.

Boo, still didn’t won customer’s heart as it never ever offer any discounts.

3. Overstaff, Overpaid, Over here and there.

Boo.com try to create a perfect working environment for its employee, with approximately 400 staffing including a call centre of 8 people, which proved to be excessive and expensive; But it actually only actually needs 30 of them.

Perhaps that's why eight weeks before its demise in mid-2000, Boo.com had only managed to generate £200,000 in turnover from 300,000 customers.

The most terrible things is that the company needed countless millions in additional funding, and as the tech stocks were plummeting like a pigeon shot mid-flight, the doors of banks were slammed, locked and welded shut.

4. Bad Planning

Its founders were too ambitious in their business plan, instead of starting small and then expanding slowly, Boo wanted to dominate the market immediately!

So, if you’re a traditional shopkeeper, would youplan to launch a NEW chain of stores in EIGHTEEN COUNTRIES SIMULATANEOUSLY!

The answer would be definitely, NO !

Obviously, Boo.com doesn’t have any ‘brick and mortar’ knowledge at all.

Maybe Boo.com really open up too early, too soon!
I bet if Boo.com do stand up again today, it does make a profit, a thousand times than when dotcom boom at the late 1990.

So, everyone, should we just take boo.com as an example before we do make a decision,do plan ahead before you take any actions.
Afterall, you will fail easily if you didn't plan wisely. 













So, do you remember BOO?

Cheers.