business model innovation design we're on a road to nowhere // on a quest to analyze and explore the design of business model innovations, i.e. 'hideous and hidden things' like organizational structures and capabilities, corporate strategies and all things related // on a yellow brick road with a girl, a lion and a straw-man wasting our time // …

Interesting article, almost a small case study, in the Guardian on Boo.com, that spent fast and died young but which legacy is still shaping internet retailing.

[Boos founders] saw Boo.com not just as a site where pixillated shop assistant Ms Boo would help shoppers find the togs to match their temperament, but as a lifestyle destination […] They reckoned the business would need £20m, 30 people and three months to launch. When it did in October 1999 it employed 400 people in eight offices, with headquarters on Carnaby Street in London, and had already swallowed four times that initial expected investment.

and

When the site went live, however, the hype was not matched by visitors or, more importantly, sales. Although it had spent several million pounds on advertising, research by pollsters Mori just before Boo.com’s collapse showed that only 13.2% of internet users were aware of the name and among non-users that fell to a mere 1.4%.

note this conclusion:

Essentially Boo.com failed because it tried to do too much: building a state-of-the-art logistics business across too many countries with an online shop front that was well beyond the capabilities of most internet user’s computers.

and that

a case to be made that the failure of Boo.com tarnished the reputation of European web start-ups and left the web to be colonised by internet giants from across the Atlantic and the online protuberances of existing bricks and mortar retailers […]

read more at the Guardian