Boo No More 208
morn writes: "Boo.com, European 'flagship' e-commerce sportswear store (maker of the distinctive 'geek in sportswear' TV and cinema ads) and largest Internet retail funding ever in Europe has financially collapsed, causing 300 job losses, according to this story by BBC News. The boo.com site is still up, and there are hopes that the firm will be taken over by a more established company. Nevertheless, it begs the asking of this year's favourite question - is this the beginning of the ecommerce bubble bursting?"
Schadenfreude (Score:1)
I dance a merry jig upon the grave of boo.com.
I interviewed for a junior help desk position with boo.com last fall when they were getting their NY office together... I thought the interview went really well and I even fixed the HR Director's Outlook setup. I was told that a second interview would take place when the VP-of-Tech-or-whoever got back from his honeymoon (who takes vacation in the midst of a crucial launch period?)
Naturally, the call never came. I tried to find out what was up through the Pimping Agency I was dealing with, and couldn't get a straight answer. Once the site was formally launched, I looked at it once and was glad not to work there. Apparently fancy LCD desktop displays and posh SoHo loft office space aren't sufficient for running a business
I ended up at a large, well-funded company a couple months later, and boo.com ended up broke. I WIN!
Re:E-Commerce Collapse? (Score:1)
Furthermore, it is very meaningful when one of the most prominent and well-funded online stores goes belly-up. This is not "Joe & Bob's Annual Going-out-of-business sale." This is some serious shit. Investors have long assumed that having a well-established name and large-scale operation would be a major advantage in internet sales. This is incredibly strong evidence that big plans ain't enough.
My personal opinion: e-businesses can succeed. But the one vital ingredient is good management. A business must start small with a working plan, and build up from there. Walmart wasn't built in a day.
It's the business model, stupid! (Score:2)
Sure, the internet bubble will burst, but this won't be the incident that issues the clarion call. Right now what we're seeing is a bunch of people throwing money at untried and often nonsensical business plans just necause it involves the net. We've got to wait for some heavy hitters to run our of capital before we see a collapse.
butidontneedmytoothpasedelivered.com
-carl
Re:Poor strategies (told you so) (Score:2)
Sure, teh design loooked good (if you could get to it) but their solutions put a lot of obstacles between their products and their would be customers wallets. That is seldom a good business practice ;-)
Credibility problems (Score:2)
Last August or so IIRC the fashion magazines were filled with editors singing the praises of Boo.com. They'd all bought Prada shoes there, it was new, it was hip, it was high-tech, all the "in" people were shopping there etc. The only problem was, even as the magazines were on the stands (never mind at the copy deadline), the website was not yet up. Must have been real tough ordering those Pradas, huh, Ms. Editrix?
Once it did go up, months later, the few from alt.fashion who returned after that debacle warned the rest of us of browser crashes a-go-go. Goes to show that word-of-mouth can work against you, too.
Re: The problem with Euro E-Commerce (Score:3)
The other telecoms operators (UUNet, NTL, etc) decide that it would be real nice to make a similar profit, rather than providing cheap internet access, and so charge similarly.
Re:Add Den to list of collapsing sites (Score:1)
It's another site that suffers from over design.
I visited Boo yesterday ... (Score:3)
I have a 144k DSL connection at home, and it was dog-slow even on that. It did have a tool to measure my data rate, and it claimed I had a 53k data rate, which was marginal to check out the "full" version. I went with the "full" version anyway because I was curious to see what it was like.
A clue as to the vast usability problems that were found on the site is that their "tour" was a condescending highlight-and-display of every single menu option on the site. It was slickly done, but too boring for me to sit through.
The actual shopping experience was sluggish, and despite using the high-bandwidth option, the product images were not large or distinctive enough to give me a good sense for what I would have been buying.
This whole thing reminds me of a friend of mine who created a very similar Javascript-laden "remove all control from the user" site. His site, like this one, was just about impossible to navigate. I felt a strong dislike for his approach, and I didn't feel any better about Boo, despite the massive budget.
I can surely shed a tear for the people who worked night and day trying to push this thing together, but as far as I can tell the site was, and still is, fatally flawed.
D
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You can't generalize from this (Score:1)
The overly-technical website didn't help, true. In UK, at least, most potential customers hve 56k modems, if that. I couldn't get the thing to work even with a current M$ browser. But there are darker things to come. A friend who works in web design tells me the buzz now is all about richmedia. By which they mean loud banners that scramble all over the screen shouting out their soundtracks. In a battle for our consciousness, they're simply upping the noise to signal ratio.
If you did this offline your stock would bomb too (Score:1)
SIlicon Valley is more expensive (Score:1)
And still it dominates the industry. Not sure why.
Alot of money disappeared down boo.com's hole. (Score:1)
Guess I should'a placed puts against the stock
bty: 20ish NT4.0 servers and 2 token Linux boxs(1x DNS, 1x Quake2 Arena)
Good riddance! (Score:2)
Even their marketing strategy I couldn't understand. Why would people want to buy _sportswear_ over the Internet? That's one of the last things you'll want to buy unviewed and untried. Consumers in this product-area is very selective and sensitive. You'll want the right colour, size, brand and in most cases you'll want to _try_ out to see what you like. Think of shoes for jogging for instance! This is all very individual.
All in all, I'm pretty happy my conclusions at that stage were correct. Not because it could never become a success, but because they violated so much regard for consumers that they truly deserved this!
This should be a lesson to all that simplicity, flexibility and choice are three fundamentals of success in design in _all areas_. You may add as much bloat and features you like, but regarding these fundamentals will eventually scare people away. This is just one very horrific example, more will hopefully follow in the future. People will learn to avoid bloatware, since it's a cause of stress and disharmony.
- Steeltoe
what makes an e-store good? (Score:1)
- big selection of stock that a real shop would find it hard to display, its the net so u can have a stock catalogue of 1000s and 1000s of items!
- reaonably quick and intuitive site, eye candy is fine if it doesn't detract from use
- backengine up to speed, that means transaction processing, security, info for clients, well thought out forms et cetera
- consistent navigation
- doesn't require me to have plugins and the latest browsers to use, maybe for value added stuff but not for stock searching and buying stuff
now thats what tends to be the case on sites that i spend money on, boo did not share much of this. nuff said really.boocom was badly handled (Score:1)
This should of course be plenty reason enough to get warning signs up. Anyone spending millions of dollars on what must be considered the core of the company and not having the knowledge to make sure it's functional is not someone I'd trust with my money. If it was a car company, there wouldn't have been a second chance.
Another thing you might want to consider is their business idea. Buying clothes online? Esp. relatively expensive clothes. Myself, I like to try clothes on first unless we're talking socks or t-shirts or the like. On the other hand, if I'm about to spend $100 on a t-shirt, I might want to have seen it first. Of course mail order companies have been selling clothes in a similar fashion for some time and are doing quite well. Maybe it's about the price or maybe it's simply that they know something about selling "on distance" that boo.com didn't know or care to find out?
The last and final straw is their marketing. Half of their spendings have been marketing related. That's over $50M in one year. This should be enough to brand your name in any small or medium-sized country. But what do they do? they market themselves everywhere at the same time. Really. I'm no marketing guru but wouldn't it have made sense to pick out one market or possibly two and start there and then conquer the markets one by one?
I doubt this is the end of e-commerce. But perhaps (we'd be so lucky) it will get people to start thinking about reality instead of thinking that the "e-commerce market" is a place wher eyou don't need to use your head to make it big. And perhaps venture capitalists will start demanding proffesional lead for companies they fund.
It's a nice thought.
Re:not me (Score:1)
Re:No, it's something else (Score:1)
you call that freedom? in the US we have the freedom to be a wage-slave [deoxy.org]. why do we work soooo much? [deoxy.org]
nmarshall
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
Prices! (Score:1)
What crowd are they aiming at? The extremely affluent who like to pay more than they should for relatively inexpensive fasions?
How to do e-Commerce right (Score:2)
While I'm at it, I highly recommend everybody read everything at his site. His choice of subject matter is unique, his scholarship is impeccable, and his writing lucidly conveys complicated ideas.
This is not significant (Score:4)
But it's not like that. Boo was a badly mismanged site -- their launch was delayed by five months due to technical problems, and they spent way too much on marketing (surprise!).
People have forgotten than 90% of Internet companies are supposed to fail; only 1 in 10 business startups of any kind last more than a few years. It's just that a whole load of Internet companies started up at the same time in the big, big boom last year and now the weaker ones are beginning to fail, but there are a lot of them. Investors got this idea that a Dot-Com was a sure investment, guaranteed to make them rich, and that's not true. Business sense, a solid business model and good management matter as much as they ever did. Amazon.Com is run by a businessman, not a geek, and that's usually the case for sucessful technology companies (e.g., um, Microsoft? Bill's more businessman than geek).
Unfortunately, no one will listen and even really good e-commerce ventures are going to have a tough time getting VC in the next twelve months. Eventually, it'll level out and there will be no difference between getting VC for an online business and an offline one (in fact, since all business will be online in some way, there will be no difference at all).
Re:No, it's something else (Score:1)
I really think that while socialism might hinder the economic growth (and economic growth is not necessarily a "good thing"), it is great at keeping the gap between the rich and the poor small. Socialism done correctly is probably the biggest reason that there aren't people without food here in Europe.. (Well, mostly.) What's the use of having a small unemployment rate if it means that some people have _no_ money at all? It's better to distribute wealth more evenly, if only a bit.
Call me a leftist, it is what I am.
Bubble has already burst! (Score:1)
Re:Usability Collapse? (Score:1)
Yeah, the story's getting a bit stale, but I thought this article [salon.com] on Salon was interesting.
- eddy the lip
A nice object lesson (Score:3)
complex websites', that most customers could not read. Some meat to
the `Viewable with any browser' campaign methinks...
Not the death of but rethinking the Net (Score:1)
Mind you the computer world was defined the same way but with one diffrence.
Companys created files and formats they would document. Standards of the future (hopefully). For the good of all.
But the notion of Commertal Internet Standards was standards controlled by the author. Closed standards. Undocumented.
In the past users wanted to stick with software that used documented standards. They don't want to be locked into the application. If the program no longer dose what is needed they need an escape hatch.
Todays users don't consider this escape. They think of now. If it works now it works for all time.
However if a company has sufficent userbase locked into it they no longer need to worry about catering to the existing users and are free to presue other markets letting the old features decay in antiqity.
This is the market today.
Part of this is in the Internet. Web pages designed for two web browsers instead of working on all HTML4 browsers.
Web sites with specal plugins that work only on one operating system and controlled by one company.
This should not be the future of the Internet.
I would like companys to rethink.
Classic companys have larg doorways that are easy to get into and out of. Easy to do your busness and leave.
Easy access for everyone.
On the Internet it's whatever a web designners notion of "everybody" is. Everybody uses Windows.
I talked with one designner. His idea was that the costummer base was wealthy and could afford high end computers and such so they wouldn't be using Amigas.
But.. he forgets... Amiga users aren't cash strapped
Such stereotyping notions of Amiga, Linux, Mac and Unix users is what is hurtting on-line busnesses.
Linux users are not all techno geeks and ISPs, Mac users arn't newbes or dumb, Unix isn't just for techno elite and Amiga users arn't poor.
I have a Dos machine at home set up as a web terminal. I don't need anything more than that for surfing the web. It dosn't do IRC it dosn't FTP very well it is still having problems picking up my e-mail. Thats not the idea.
I just wanted a box to surf the web from home.
Thats it.
No Java, no streaming audio no specal media at all. Just Dos and Arachne.
At work I have my Linux box.
Thats what I put my money... in my Linux box (I am so rarely home it dosn't matter much).
The notion that "Everybody uses Windows" is unrealistic.
I'm hopping that at some point someone gets the message. Designe for everyone or stay off-line...
Re:E-Commerce Collapse? (Score:3)
Moreover, Boo attempted to launch as a fully fledged multinational, with 300 staff and offices all over the world. It over-engineered its front-end - whether this drove customers away is an issue i can't answer but it certainly took a chunk out of the $135m startup capital by launching over three months late.
It isn't the end of e-commerce: it's just yet another bad business idea, badly managed, by inexperienced managers, that spent too mcuh too quick. There's a surfeit of these on the Net now, - expect a spectacular crash every few months. But the idea of e-commerce is still sound, it's just the number of jokers getting VC for a used toilet paper B2B exchange that's the problem.
Re:Not surprised ... (Score:1)
I think you'll find that almost every major sunday supplement has had full page colour ads for boo.com. The TV and radio ads were also highly prominent (assuming you watched or listened to the kind of programs that, in general, appealed to boo's target market).
tam (~boo)
Re:English & Europe (Score:1)
Re:Boo was crap (Score:1)
it asked what country you were in. This was idiotic, given that the largest pool of visitors were in the US.
This isn't true; boo was highly advertised in Europe so had a far higher European visitor ratio than most .coms have.
Why ask the country up front? Why not wait until late in the transaction?
Because one needs to know how much something costs before deciding to purchase it. And your currency can only be defined if the site knows which country you're in. That was the whole point - to have prices in French Francs or UK pounds or Deutschemarks etc. as appropriate. The alternative? Imagine search results with a list of prices in each of the 19 or so currencies boo supported next to each product. Horrific.
And if you have different warehouses for Europe and North America, then advertise two separate sites, stupid!
So who gets www.boo.com? Should there be a www.boo.com for Europe and a www.us.boo.com or www.boo.com/us for the US? That alienates a whole continent. And if everyone uses www.<countrycode>.boo.com, then what gets shown at www.boo.com?
Forcing people to select a country at entry sucks. But having one universally recognised URL ending in .com for a global company is at the root of that particular problem. If, for example, people in the UK immediately went to <company>.co.uk instead of <company>.com then all would be well -- but they don't. Most people go to www.boo.com and expect to be served there.
If only we all.. had... per...sonal cli....ent cert.....ific...........ates..............
tam (~boo)
Somebody call Les. (Score:1)
It's just another reality check for the market (Score:2)
Maybe we'll start to see a backlash in the IPO prices of dotcoms, now that it's been demonstrated that poorly planned, poorly run cyberspace retailers fail just like poorly planned, poorly run meatspace retailers.
Boo To Rise Again? (Score:1)
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Re:No, it's something else (Score:2)
cheap hardware! (Score:1)
Reasons for Failure (Score:1)
1) Speed (Or lack thereof) - I tried it a few days ago. This is a site that wants bandwidth and plenty of it. When you get to the first page, your connection is assessed as to whether you want the funky version (read:slow) or the simpler version (read:nearly as slow). There's just too much going on. I connected on a 56k modem (like most home shoppers), but the assessment told me that I was going to have to use the simple version. Basically, if you wanted good speed, you were probably going to have use at least a 2 channel ISDN connection to get it. I've done connections using the fixed line at work, and it's still pretty lousy.
That immediately alienates the majority of home users straight away, who aren't prepared to grow old during the download. Most people are still using 56k modems.
2) From what I can gather, they employed at least 300 people and this was going to be the biggest money burner of all. If they had been more conscious of their money/resource allocation from the start, they probably could have lasted longer, which in turn would have given them considerably more time to start getting the money in.
3) The relative success of some sites is in their discounting. You are enticed to a site because of it's cut price goods. That's supposed to be the benefit of going to a site - the reduction in overheads are passed on to you. Boo seemed to sell at full retail price for everything. Yet again, another incentive not to shop there. I can go down the high street and get things for the same price, sometimes cheaper. What's my incentive to go there ?
4) Finally, their advertising was lousy. I only went there because I heard it was going down the pan. Ultimately, considering the marketing/advertising budget they had, I really don't understand who they were targeting. I don't have my head buried in the sand all day and I never saw a single advert. My colleagues say the same. I think they must have pitched the marketing very badly.
Ultimately, those commerce sites that have good business plans along with sound marketing will survive. In all fairness, I've heard statistics that 1 in 3 UK businesses fail in their first year, so perhaps this isn't such a big surprise. What's the big deal if 1 in 3 .com's fail at about the same rate ?
M.
Buying clothes online is plain stupid (Score:2)
- It's probably more expensive (shipping, etc.)
- The payment is potentially insecure
- I can't see the clothes correctly on the web site, and I can't try them
- I don't know if and how I can send back the clothes
- I have to wait before to get them
And the same goes for a lot of things. For example, I can't have a look at good look at a book online, and it's rather difficult just to discover other books. All, that, combined with the fact that my phone provider is way too expensive, and you will understand why Boo.com will not work before a long time. BTW, has Amazon.com ever made any profit?E-Commerce Collapse? (Score:3)
E-commerce (dammit, I hate that word, as well as anything starting with e- or i- besides e-mail) definately has some kinks to work out before it works as well as physical stores, but there's no reason at all why it shouldn't. It's just like a normal store, only the cost of running it is a bit cheaper. No different than mail-order stores, really.
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E-Commerce has a long way to go (Score:3)
I keep trying to explain to people that our economy right now is in "frontier" mode. For examples of what to expect, look to the international expansion of the US economy post-war (both world wars, really); the beginning of the industrial age; the western expansion of the US, etc.
Re:A cautionary tale of Web design (Score:2)
In general, increased commercialization of the Web seems to be resulting in decreased utility.
Sites that I visit irregularly (dejanews, cinemark, etc.) seem to be less usable each time I visit, and the phenomenon seems to be directly linked to commercialization: the pot of gold (search link, local schedule, whatever) is crowded in among the ads, links to other sites they want you to visit, and the general clutter that comes from attempting to be a universal portal. Further, deep links directly to the pot of gold are increasingly impossible, since they don't want you to miss all the ads and stuff.
Finally, lots of the old fun sites (Anagram Insanity, etc.) are often shopped around, degraded, or dropped altogether, because suddenly the Web isn't a place to share and have fun anymore. Too many people seem to think there is something basically immoral about passing up an opportunity to make a buck.
ps - Oh, the irony. While composing the above, I visited www.phonetic.com to see what its current status is. As I recently mentioned, I always surf with image downloading turned off. So what do I see as text replacement for the image at the top of their page?
Gosh. D'yer think I should click it just to see what all-important image I'm missing out on?
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No, it's something else (Score:4)
Is e-commerce any worse than others? (Score:2)
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Re:E-Commerce Collapse? (Score:2)
Hear, hear!
I'm getting so sick of everyone jumping on this e- and i- bandwagon. Is everybody just so uncreative that they can't think of a better name for their products or company? If I see a new company/product beginning with the i- or e- I pretty much ignore it, figuring it's mostly hype. (Been right for the most part, as far as my tastes go) YMMV.
Don't you love being in a hard to staff industry (Score:2)
I hope that the managers and sales staff have as much luck.
"sportswear for geeks" ? (Score:3)
Re:E-Commerce has a long way to go (Score:2)
Re:Boo was crap (Score:2)
-- was idiotic, given that the largest pool of
-- visitors were in the US.
This isn't true; boo was highly advertised in Europe so had a far higher European visitor ratio than most
Largest pool, I said. U.S. population: 300 million, with a higher level of internet penetration than any large European country. Surely Germany doesn't have as many internet users as the U.S. And Finland may be wired to the gills, but it's got fewer people than the Chicago metro area.
Show prices in Euros and dollars if you really must put Europatriotism over sales. Hell, once you're using so much Flash anyway, have a discreet map of the (NATO-vicinity) world in the corner of the page that zooms on rollover.. do something. Or do as others do. Have a discreet pointer for switching countries. Defaulting to the US may be offensive, but until there's a bigger single market for a B2C e-commerce site, it makes business sense. And I'm well aware that day is at hand, between the rollout of the Euro and Japan's mad rush to net adoption.
Anyway, Amazon doesn't seem to be having a problem with www.amazon.co.uk and www.amazon.de branding. Surely that's better than doing a lousy job of selling to everyone.
Re:E-Commerce has a long way to go (Score:2)
Re:E-Commerce has a long way to go (Score:2)
Just some nay-saying.
Now fontier mode does sound very impressive, but what people need most cannot be brought to them via the Internet.
Many of my co-workers buy their food over the Internet. Looking for a home without the use of the Internet is starting to become "old school". And as far as companionship, I can't count the number of couples that I know who met on-line.
What sorts of goods did you have in mind? Cars? Businesses? Office supplies? Sex toys? Contract services? Intellectual property research materials? Financial services?
Let's not start revising history before it's made. The Internet (and commerce thereon) is revolutionizing the way we do things. WILL we all fall back into the same human patterns as before, but with the Internet as a piece of our lives? Of course; that's what humans do. But it's also what humans did as a result of the industrial revolution.
Bubble Bursting... (Score:2)
Re: The problem with Euro E-Commerce (Score:2)
What justifies these extreme costs? Somebody somewhere is making a killing on this, and at the same time killing the internet in Europe it would seem. I am not sure of the value of the pound, but it seems like I probably pay less in rent for my 2 bdrm apartment than you do for your 64kb connection.
I was considering moving to England or Scotland at some point in the next few years (always wanted to spend some time there) but perhaps not, if the future of the internet is looking bleak...
Re:No, It's not (Score:2)
I'll release the spandex shorts under the GPL so other people can make their own spandex shorts. But mine will have the "OFFICIAL" Boo.com logo on them, and we'll operate a call center for when people have trouble putting them on. But they'll only get support for 30 days after buying them, if they need help with daily use of their spandex shorts, they'll have to pay us a $125 per incident fee.
I'll be rich, I tell you, rich.
And make sure they degrade gracefully (Score:2)
Web browsers have this neat feature -- if they don't understand something in your code, they don't puke; they ignore it. If you use this to your advantage, you have the best of both worlds -- fancy stuff for the JS/Flash/etc.-enabled, and the non-enabled don't know what they're missing. :)
That, combined with the above poster's design sensibilities, are the golden rules, IMO.
phil
Re:A cautionary tale of Web design (Score:2)
It definitly had Flash. It had a little virtual you that would put on the clothes and let you pan around. It had a little virtual Ms. Boo that would comment (allways positave empty comments). And it was dog slow. And not from anything on our end.
Oh, and the virtual you? You can't tell what the damm clothes look like on it anyway. Your better off looking at the models (so you can see how the fabric really drapes).
Even if boo.com failed for other reasons, I like to think of the total lack of usability testing as a contributing factor. Or total lack to listen to the testing.
If the "bubble being over" means really bad sites like this dry up, I'm all for it.
Re:E-Commerce Collapse? (Score:2)
True, but furniture stores and traditional retail stores are old, established business models. No one goes into panic mode when one closes down.
Online retailers, however, are new, untested business models. Major on-line vendors are watched closer than any other businesses, and when one fails, there are plenty of Internet pundits waiting in the wings with their "See, I told you, the E-commerce bubble is bursting" articles (read, ZD-Net).
Obviously one failing business isn't going to drag the whole economy down with it, but it does get people talking, and eventually has an effect. Personally, I think the e-commerce and internet stock market are due for a "correction": the whole E-Commerce field has been growing too far, too fast. Many businesses will fall by the wayside no doubt, but when it's all said and done, you'll have a collection of businesses that have weathered the storm, and will be financially stronger because of it. And that's when e-commerce will start to become trusted by Average Joe, and really start to take off.
Re:A cautionary tale of Web design (Score:2)
Personally, I use rollovers and other Javascript toys a lot. However, I aim to make them a minor part of the page and use them only where they genuinely enhance the user experience, and with small footprint images. No full screen rollovers will ever be found on one of my pages, ever, period, end of sentence.
If you don't really have anything to say you only prove that fact by maxing out the special effects. (Does anybody know if George Lucas reads /.?)
It was kind of expected... (Score:2)
Unfortunatly, the British are so used to the VAT that they cannot see just how much it is holding them back.
Boo was crap (Score:5)
Its home page didn't show any product or say what it was. It popped up a window that also didn't show any product or say what it was. Instead, it asked what country you were in. This was idiotic, given that the largest pool of visitors were in the US, and doubly idiotic because the US was at the bottom of an alphabetized list of countries. Very egalitarian and politically astute, sure, but idiotic if your goal is to sell, especially given that on average you lose half of all visitors with each click. Why ask the country up front? Why not wait until late in the transaction? And if you have different warehouses for Europe and North America, then advertise two separate sites, stupid!
Once you drilled down to a product through its lovely but tedious Flash menus, you had to return to the store entrance to pick another brand or type of product. In other words, to pick a shirt and then get a pair of jeans, you'd have to click "continue shopping", which would take you to the front of the store again, because menus don't follow you through the drilldown.
And the Flash. Flash is nice. Flash is close enough to universal these days to be justifiable on a commerce site. But Boo's use of complex framesets, multiple windows and multiple Flash elements per screen makes computers with less than 128MB RAM cry.
Multiple windows. Eek! A Boo shopping session is pretty crowded with all the windows it opens on a 1280x1024 display. Windows overlap on 1024x768. At least a third of all web users are running in 800x600 or 640x480. And those on bigger monitors probably have other windows open for other apps anyway. Ouch.
Boo was theoretically right in some of its design decisions. The mix-and-match clothing previewer is a keeper, or will be someday, as are the ideas behind the fabric zoom and 360-degree views. But the way they did it, over the heads and over the hardware reality of potential customers, was pure idiocy. The only serious interface change they made over time was to get rid of the "clippy"-like virtual advisor (also in a separate window). Adn I sort of liked that element.
Well said! +1, Dead Right. (Score:2)
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boo.com can blame themselves (Score:2)
Second, they use frames. And tables. And flash. And JavaScript. And img.src. And CSS. And lots of browser-specific stuff. Basically they designed it for IE5/NS4 and Pentium II or equivalent. Big mistake.
Because when people can't reach your website, they won't register. When people don't register, they don't buy. And when people don't buy you have no income. Simple as that.
The fact that boo.com is no more has nothing to do with any cracks in any e-commerce bubble. The fact is that boo.com was a bad site.
The lesson to learn? Don't use the latest and greatest in browser technology. Don't force flash, Javascript or anything fancy. Don't open any fscking new window. Keep it simple and FAST and your visitors will thank you in the form of visits and purchases.
They *deserved* to go bankrupt (Score:2)
I've *never* seen such a good example of a badly designed web site. It goes against *any* common sense, let alone advanced user interface guidelines. I went there the first day of their opening, and I found it:
Overall, most of the junk mail I get in my snailmailbox is more useful than this crap site ever was.
The downside is that plenty of legitimate ideas won't get financed as a result of investor getting too cautious now. For fuck's sake, it was so fucking obvious that those people did'nt have the slightest clue what they were doing!
GO TO HELL, BOO.COM, AND STAY THERE!!!
Re:No, it's something else (Score:4)
The US offers the most freedom to its people -- yes, including the freedom to go broke and lay off and fire people, who then have the freedom to have no healthcare and not enough food. But with those social ills... ah, but not: with only the risk of those social ills comes the power of flexibility. It means that a free economy can quickly throw out the old and adopt the new.
In the 80's, everybody talked about Japan and European unification. Now, everybody talks about China. Why did J and E "fail" to overthrow US economic dominance, and why will C? Because they still don't get it: economic freedom allows individuals to generate more technology and more wealth.
But, there's nothing uniquely "US" about freedom -- other than historically, it's where we've seen the most experimentation with freedom. Look at the open and free software movement: lot's of non US participation, maybe even dominance. Why? Because it's an area that offers freedom without regard to where you come from.
Re: The problem with Euro E-Commerce (Score:3)
To run a large scale web site here costs a fortune. I run a tiny site behind a 64k leased line link, and it costs a fortune for the facilities I have, in comparison to my American business colleagues (*). I can't even begin to think what it must cost to have 2 redundant T1's (actually I can, and the cost is anywhere between frightening to unbearable).
(*) I pay £3600 (+17.5% tax) a year for 64Kb. My manager pays something like $40 a month for 1.5Mb down and 512Kb upstream.
My wife never heard of boo.com (Score:5)
But when I showed Debbie this Slashdot post, she said she'd never heard of boo.com and certainly hadn't ever bought anything from them.
Upon reflection, she thought she *might* have checked out the site briefly when it first launched, but found it unusable (because of all the Java). and didn't think their clothing selection was very exciting or that their prices were anything special, so she forgot about it.
Multiply Debbie by millions of other women online, and it should be obvious why the company failed.
- Robin
no tears for boo (Score:3)
Boo.com eventually redesigned, but by the time Boo Mk.2 launched, I no longer heard The Buzz. My suspicion is that, flush with his/her buzz-generating success after launch, the PR person in charge at the beginning jumped ship for greener pastures, while the techs and a dwindling design staff, morale shaken by user criticism, scrambled to use ever-diminishing capital to make the site usuable on the second go-round. Just a guess.
Is the fall of boo.com a harbinger of the collapse of e-commerce? No more than RedHat stock's return to non-stratospheric levels invalidates Linux as a viable platform. Although I do think it's a harbinger of the inevitable return to earth of many overfunded companies flush with bright-eyed twenty-one-year-olds who think that being on the cutting edge guarantees their success and liberates them from such mundanities as user testing and developing a weatherproof business plan. Their ilk are numerous and we'll all be better off (and a bit wiser) without them.
Re:A cautionary tale of Web design (Score:2)
Indeed.
But for dejanews, there is a simple answer. Just try typing:
http://www.deja.com/=dnc/[]/ [deja.com]
and you get through 90% of the crap. It is left as an exercise for the reader to discover other options you can tack onto that URL to customize your web experience even more. :-)
Failure of Venture Capitalism + projections (Score:2)
It's all bollocks. These are extremely early days on a new business frontier, and whereas it's easy to see that the entirety of existence will be online in the fullness of time, at the moment only a wishful thinking idiot would hold him/herself to ransom through a banker's noose, to mix various metaphors.
The ecommerce bubble is not bursting, it's barely started to form into a recognizable shape. This is a ladder that will grow all the way to the stars, but we're currently on rung one or two. To say that it doesn't lead anywhere interesting at this stage is utterly ridiculous.
What moron would buy shoes online? (Score:2)
However, buying something that's supposed to fit your body is not smart. There are variations in the manufacturing of each item that requires a fitting before you purchase them. Shoes are a classic example. I went shopping for sneakers with my wife two weeks ago. She tried on about four pairs, all of which were her size and looked like they would fit. However, only one was comfortable, and we would never have known that just by looking at them.
The same applies to a lot of the other items for sale, such as pants, leotards, and bikinis. My god, what woman would buy a bikini without trying it on first!?!?!?
Re:E-Commerce Collapse? (Score:2)
And what sucks is, that if enough people do this, the sky just might fall.
Bad Mojo [rps.net]
Re:No, it's something else (Score:2)
As to JamesSharman's point about Europe having been passed by, personally I don't count anyone out of the race. With the rate of change driving complete turnovers in technology and indeed in market creation itself, there will be plenty of places to 'jump in' downstream. And the advantage of going second is that you can avoid the mistakes of the first fellow. He does get there first, but you can avoid stepping in anything that he did
For an example, take a look at cell phone technology. If I remember correctly, North America had it first, but Europe adopted a later standard (GSM) which give better performance and is more readily scalable.
Just my $0.02,
Matt
Re:My wife never heard of boo.com (Score:2)
Apparently this thing was running in England, and was the biggest on-line shop of its kind in the world. Well, as an Englishman, I have to say that the first time I have ever heard of it was this morning on the radio news, where they are trying to pursue the angle that becaue this one ill-conceived venture has failed, the whole Internet must be a flop. Its pretty unlikely that I would have bought anything off them, but then I don't have any interest in the products of hypsters LastMinute.com, but at least I know who they are.
Boo sold sportswear, right? I hate the whole sportswear for casualwear thing. I run and play squash (in real sportswear), but I don't wear Nikes to go to the pub. Its is always taken to the extreme by fat people and teenagers who smoke cigarettes and have bad acne. Why do the obese always wear clothing that tries to suggest they are the most out of shape long-distance runner in the world or something?
Thoughts (Score:3)
The economic rules are slightly different for dotcoms. Most of the cash they burn goes on advertising, the actual costs of doing business (altho' I haven't done any quant to confirm this) for boo.com would be much lower than, say, Nike Town. Once a dotcom gets funded, it could probably hang on for 6 months just by lying low.
If boo.com had worked out that marketing and advertising aren't the same thing, they'd probably have been a lot more successful. Consider a demographic who are constantly online with high powered equipment and plenty of bandwidth, have disposable income, and like to wear designer sportswear: the "new media" community, of course. Instead of the "viral" effect boo might of hoped for, the people who could have been their biggest market spent most of their time laughing at the site's ludicrous over-design - and everyone else couldn't get into the site at all!
boo go boom (Score:3)
just take a glance at the top 50 traffic sites or the top 20 in e-sales and see how many of these hip designs are on the list...
Poor strategies (Score:3)
But, initially at least, a large proportion of its potential market was unable to access Boo's site because the website design was too advanced for most computers.
I wonder what they meant by that? I went to the site before it got /.ed and it seemed fairly ordinary to me. Malmsten and Hedelin did a good job with the mechanics of the site from what I can tell, but it sure looks like their rent-an-exec management staff made some very poor choices such as betting the farm on the value of board member relationships as the vehicle for capital, rather than raising capital by not overselling the value of the site/product.
Cash flow analysis (Score:2)
Ticker CAIS CIK=010784040 0928385-00-001580.txt
Parsing EDGAR index page: http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/srch-edgar?0001078404
Parsing EDGAR filing: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1078404/00
Analysis for CAIS INTERNET INC filed 20000515
Start date: JAN-01-2000
End date: MAR-31-2000
Period: 90 days.
Multiplier: 1000
Liquid assets: 26952000
Income: -83497000
Days to live since report: 29
Analysis for CAIS INTERNET INC:
Based on data from SEC schedule EX-27 for the period JAN-01-2000 to MAR-31-2000, the predicted bankrupcy date is Apr 29, 2000 which is -18 days away
Or, in other words, what are they using for money?
The Beginning of The End????? (Score:3)
That would be the same as saying that just because the shop around the corner is shutting, then retail is going to be abandoned, and we will all return to self sufficiency.
Also, if you look at Boo, and what they did, it's not much of a surprise that they went under. First of all they only targetted themselves at IE4 and NS4 or higher users, and for a long time the Mac was passed over completely.
Also, most people complained about the non-intuitive nature of the interface, and the aparrent difficulty in actually getting to the checkout (not to mention the speed, and MS office paper-clip inspired shop assistants).
So really, it's not that much of a surprise. As one news report put it, it shows that you should never put style over substance.
Re: Cash flow analysis (Score:2)
In the startup phase, there are companies that need repeated rounds of financing to cover their expansion-phase losses. They assume that 1) someday there will be profits, and 2) they will be able to obtain repeated additional financing until then. Those are dangerous assumptions from a stockholder perspective. Even if the company gets financing, it either dilutes stockholder equity or adds a debt load.
I'm not singling out CAIS Internet; there are all too many companies in this boat. CAIS's numbers look particularly bad because they had a forced payout to preferred stockholders in the first quarter. Nevertheless, their latest 10-Q filing [sec.gov] is a painful read.
The analysis I'm doing simply assumes that losses will continue at the current rate, and big trouble will come when the cash runs out. This is a classic cash-flow analysis. One can make more optimistic assumptions, but when you see a company out of cash in the near future (or the recent past!) it's an indicator of, well, problems.
Re:Why they failed.. (Score:2)
Things you learn in Business School... (Score:2)
My bet: The big-yet-poorly-managed companies, like Amazon, survive, but barely. The smaller ones, like cdnow and pets.com, either dry up or get bought by "old-world" brick-and-mortar companies. The tiny companies... well, let's just say those stock options you've been working for in lieu of a real paycheck will keep you warm for a little while if you use them as kindling.
There will still be plenty of healthy Internet companies, though, once people figure out exactly how to create a profitable e-commerce company. (Has it been done yet?)
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
I just hope CDNOW will stick around (Score:2)
You wanna see crap music sites? go to HMV [hmv.com] orSam The Record Man [samscd.com] (hey what can I say, i gotta give props to Canadian content
HMV requires JavaScript for any of their links to work (goodbye fast loading times) Not a lot of info on some artists, though anything new has some info on it. Sam's search leaves a lot to be desired, and they don't have covers or track listings for a lot of their back catalogue.
I find CDNOW to be immensely valuable for research, even if I haven't bought anything from them yet.
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
Re:E-Commerce Collapse? (Score:2)
And that's the key isn't it? How does one differentiate a traditional mail order business from these new-fangled e-commerce businesses? Functionally, they are the same. E-commerce has the advantage of not needing to print and mail paper catalogs (big cost savings) and can also eliminate clerks in the back office to process requests. As with everything, there are problems with implementing these advantages.
A lot of mail order places still print catalogs. I think there are three reasons for this:
1. Some electronic catalogs suck. The people commissioning them decided to pay the least expensive developer - and it shows.
2. Paper is VISIBLE. Electrons aren't. When the computer shuts off, the catalog is still on the desk in full view. 3. Culture, which goes something like this: Well, Smarty Pants computer-person, we have been printing a catalog for 50 years....(get it?)
There are also problems in the back office. While some places have really good front-end web sites, they still use varying degrees of paper processing. Reasons for this range from not understanding how to streamline business process to include paperless processing to not wanting to spend the money to being overly conservative about change in general.
While there are sites that offer great deals on merchandise, I have found a lot of instances where the cost of something online, plus shipping, is nearly equal to the cost of buying it in a local store and paying sales tax.
There are other sites that actually charge more than their local retail counterparts. Last year, for example, I was looking for blue jeans at the Levi's website. If I remember correctly, they were charging an average of $35 per pair plus shipping. The local mall sold them for $25, with no sales tax on clothes. Granted, I live in an area with a lower cost of living, so this might have been a good deal in a place like Manhattan. But more people live outside of Manhattan than in it. If an e-merchandising is to remain a viable choice, then these businesses must adjust to the geo-economic realities of their expanded client base.
Re:No, it's something else (Score:2)
If, by that, you mean a company that is in one geographic location and nowhere else, then you are forgetting one thing: shipping.
Not just shipping costs, which are currently pretty high between eg the States and the UK (generally more than any discount you'll be getting on the goods, in my experience), but the time it takes.
If I order a book from amazon.co.uk (assuming I can find one that has a discount that covers the postage costs, of course...), then I generally get it the next day (dependent on stock levels, etc). How long would it take to get the same book delivered from the States? 3 days without paying through the nose for it to go by air?
If I can get it for a comparable price, right now, form the bookshop down the street, why would I bother?
Yes, the companies may be owned elsewhere, and may have their head offices elsewhere, but they are still going to need warehouses and distributors globally if they want to sell globally and remain competitive.
Even American owned companies are going to create jobs in Europe (and vice versa), if they want to sell there.
I agree with your point about metering of internet calls, and would add that the slooooooooow roll out of ADSL and similar broad-band access is also crippling the widespread adoption of the internet here in the UK. Until there is widespread availability of (relatively) cheap, high-speed net access, the UK isn't evengoing to be a minor "internet player", let alone one of the leading ones, as our Government would like us to be. (I'll ignore for now some of the proposed laws that will have just as adverse an effect...)
Cheers,
Tim
Re:E-Commerce Collapse? (Score:2)
kwsNI
Re:Things you learn in Business School... (Score:2)
profitable e-commerce company. (Has it been done yet?)</i>
<p>
Yes. Amazon.com's book sales have been profitable for nearly a year now. It's only by pushing into new market segments that they keep from making a profit overall. It's often said that Amazon could turn a profit tomorrow if they focussed on book sales alone.
No, It's A Third Thing (Score:2)
The real reason Boo.com failed is this:
Right now, Boo.com is the worst user experience on the planet.
Flash-based, it forces far too many long downloads, slow page redraws and a pathetic user experience that provides layers upon layers of interactivity to even reach a product. On a dial-up connection it is completely unusuable; on a fat pipe, it's barely so. The addition of unbelievable amounts of javascript and frames mean that even the fastest computer will see speed hits on other simultaneous functions.
Finally, the products are completely lack-luster. I can buy similar (or the same) items at faster sites any day of the week, usually for less money.
In web-design circles and advertising agencies here in New York City, Boo.com is a running gag, the place you say people worked when they're horrible at their job.
Boo.com deserves to fail.
A cautionary tale of Web design (Score:5)
Now the company has gone bankrupt. Could this be related to customers being driven away by their early, over-flashy Website?
The tale of boo.com might be a useful weapon when trying to persuade your customers that JavaScript rollovers, MIDI files and Flash are not the last word in sophisticated Web design.
Why they failed.. (Score:3)
Unbelievably, Boo managed to piss £80m up the wall. Despite having this massive arsenal, they seroiusly f**ked up the technology side, with a site most people couldn't use, and it sucked for those that did.
It just goes to show the poor light that a lot of ecommerce entreprenures see technology in. They are quite happy to waste tens of millions on stupid marketing campaigns, but cannot be bothered to invest time and money to make sure their web sites work!
Whats the betting that their technology people told them that their 'high tech' web site ideas wouldn't work in practice, and where roundly ingnored by the management who wouldn't know one end of a computer from the another.
Still, this is the END of the bubble for companies like this. No one is getting that kind of money unless they seriously know what they are doing, including the technology aspect
Not the end of ecommerce (Score:3)
I'd just like to point out that, though I did indeed pose that question, I didn't mean it as "Is this the end for ecommerce" or anything so dramatic - I meant "Are people finaly realising that a company has to make a profit to succeed?"
--
--
Re:E-Commerce Collapse? (Score:2)
That said, someone needs to stop running around yelling "The sky is falling, the sky is falling".
kwsNI
Not the downfall of ecommerce (Score:2)
<summary>
It was all Boo's fault for experimenting after they started their high-profile ad campaigns, not before.
</summary>
Re:No, it's something else (Score:3)
I agree with you though, its the economic structure of the US that allows it to be dominant. Socialism in Europe is the only reason why they can't become a competitive entity.
"Socialism promised to bring both increased wealth and greater equality, but in the end it stymied the growth of wealth almost everywhere it was tried and, from all appearances, was not altogether successful in bringing about greater equality either. When it ostensibly succeeded in leveling standards of living throughout a society -- as one socialist once commented with enthusiasm -- it came with 'all people being equally shabby.'" -Alan Greenspan
Re:No, it's something else (Score:2)
Both have about the same number of people, (EU a bit higher). But while the EU has 15 nations with 15 legal codes, and 14 currencies (For now) and however many languages (12?) the USA has 1 legal system (Yes each state is different but much closer, but with one exception they are all based on English Comon Law) 1 Language, 1 Currency etc.
Its a lot harder to be a pan European company, I worked for a company that had to deal will the entire EU (And more) and it was in many ways a major pain in the but.
The Cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
I know why boo.com failed (Score:2)
(karma begone
Re:E-Commerce has a long way to go (Score:2)
Of course. Civil unrest is ongoing everywhere in the world with hot-spots popping up at the rate of at least one per day.
Catastrophe... how about the fires in the southwest? Of course, someone will pull a major boner in the world of e-commerce, and some group of elderly won't get their medicine. It will happen. Legislation will be proposed. Nothing will happen. Happens in every industry.
Ethnic clensing? Well, if you think of the traditional hacker (MIT definition) as the native Internet inhabitant....
Yes, frontier economies lead to frontier lifestyles. The bad bank-robbers and pirates and stage-holdups will happen. The 50s were a time of tremendous prosperity, but also of massive coruption and misuse. This is human nature, and hiding away from civilization is not really a very good solution.
boo.com link crashes Nestcape 4.7 on Linux 2.2 (Score:2)
Have fun.
I have nothing else to say about just another hype market failure.
Where were you in April? (Score:2)
Judging by the stock market, that happened about a month ago. It's not that investors don't think e-commerce is going to be all that and a bag of chips, it's just that it's not clear whether or not consumers will be the only real beneficiary.
-cwk.
Re:Poor strategies (told you so) (Score:2)
...if you click on the rolling shoe (Score:2)
St00p3d m3.
In NNTP we have this great option to withdraw.
Things to come (Score:4)
This could hurt alot of startups. Somehow boo went through $135m in one year. For more details check out ft.com they have a very good article [ft.com] on it.
awful web design = failure (Score:2)
Re:Poor strategies (told you so) (Score:2)
I checked it out when they were new and saw failure coming fast
Who buys clothes by mailorder? Not their target group anyway.
If you want to sell something online it has to be either more convenient, cheaper or well stocked than the meat space alternative.
Boo was not cheaper, did not offer more choise and was not more convenient than your usual store. "Cool" webdesign might attract visitors, but they will not *buy* anything.