Dot-com bubble victim set for 2006 relaunch
Boo.com, the online retailer and a high-profile victim of the first dot-com bubble, is poised for a relaunch within months.
The details are unclear but the website currently has a holding page saying, “Boo.com is back and a new site will be launched in 2006.”
The website is currently registered to Sinead Mooney, a Dublin-based businesswoman. She did not return calls from Marketing Week at the time of going to press.
If the relaunch goes ahead it will be the latest twist in the dramatic history of the site. Boo.com was founded in 1998 by Swedes Ernst Malmsten and Kajsa Leander as a market-leading fashion site.
It got through an estimated $135m (£84m) in funding but did not gain enough customers or revenue to keep going. When it collapsed in 2000 it was the most high-profile website to fail in the dot-com bust.
The site was acquired in June 2000 by US e-commerce company Fashionmall and relaunched that October as a portal linking to other online shops. But Fashionmall hit its own financial problems and in March 2003 delisted its shares from Nasdaq.
Boo.com’s technology platform was bought by Bright Station, a company controlled by entrepreneur Dan Wagner, which has since used it to develop the Venda e-commerce system used by retailers such as Hamleys and The Body Shop. Wagner says there were no plans for the new Boo.com site to use the Venda platform.
