Boo! Disgraced retail site back this month

In the Internet world, failures are king

By Kieren McCarthy • Get more from this author

Posted in Business, 14th October 2000 09:03 GMT

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The relaunch of shoddy sportswear site Boo.com is due to go ahead at the end of this month. The URL, trademark and a few other bits were bought by Fashionmall.com in June, after the bulk of it had been bought by Bright Station for £250,000.

Fashionmall said at the time that it planned to use boo.com to break into the European market and the site's front page now sports a $1000 offer for "style scouts" (?) whereas before it simply had a redirect to the company main site.

Fashionmall isn't giving much away. It paid £400,000 for Boo (nowhere near the $120 million the site managed to swallow before it went under), but has given little indication of whether it will stick with the original format or go for a tweaked version of its own. It also won't comment on financial matters - you know, making a profit, that sort of thing.

Do we care? No, not really. But Boo.com has become a by-word for daft, cash-guzzling dotcoms. It is also an interesting study in brands. Boo.com is well known as being an utter failure, but are the hardcore branders right? Are people so lemming-like that they buy from names they know, even with that little twinge somewhere in their brain that tells them something is afoot? We shall see. ®