Boo.com is one of the greatest defunct Web sites and Dotcom disaster listed by CNET on June 2008, which was founded by three Swedish entrepreneurs, Ernst Malmsten, Kajsa Leander and Patrik Hedelin as an online fashion store. Boo.com flopped after having to liquidate and was placed into receivership in 18 May 2000.
The vision for Boo.com is become the worlds first online global sports retail site. The target market by Boo.com is from 18 to 24 year olds and characterized “young, well-off and fashion conscious.”
Why did Boo.com fail?
The main reason failure of Boo.com is the website which is poorly design. The site was heavily relied on JavaScript and Flash technology, but as that time it was very slow to load at a time when dial-up Internet usage was a norm. Hence, majority of users need to wait couple of minutes for the page to load successfully. Besides that, the complicated design required to be displayed in a fixed size window, which limited space available to display product information to customers.
Poor management of Boo.com is also one of the reason cause the failure. Boo.com had only managed to generate £200,000 in turnover from 300,000 customers. Boo’s sales did not match expectations, due to high number of products returned by customers (a service that was providing free, but Boo.com charged for their logistics supplier).
Next, there is overstaff problem exist in the company, that is employed 400 people when it was only estimated it needed 30 people. The company needed countless millions in additional funding is the worst thing that the Boo.com did. Boo.com simply tried to do too much, too soon.
References:
1. http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/0,39029552,49296926-3,00.htm
2. http://www.davechaffey.com/E-commerce-Internet-marketing-case-studies/Boo.com-case-study
3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C36Z3i_USryY
4. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2005/may/16/media.business
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