Boo.com: The 3D Fashion Site That Burned $135 Million in 18 Months

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At the turn of the millennium, when most people reached the internet through a screeching dial-up modem, three Swedish entrepreneurs set out to build a 3D interactive fashion store for wealthy 18 to 24 year olds. Ernst Malmsten, Kajsa Leander, and Patrik Hedelin had already built Bokus.com into the third largest online bookseller in the world, so investors assumed clothing would be no harder. This episode follows Boo.com from its Carnaby Street headquarters to its liquidation on May 18th, 2000, after it burned through $135 million in 18 months.

The site offered a virtual shopping assistant named Miss Boo and garments you could drag onto a mannequin and spin 360 degrees, all delivered through JavaScript and Flash to 56K modems. Behind the delays sat $25 million of advertising spent before a single sale, 400 employees, eight offices from Munich to New York, and free returns shipped by Deutsche Post. The episode explains how the site finally worked just as the NASDAQ crashed, and what became of the wreckage.

The founders wanted the name Bo.com, found it taken, and bought Boo.com from a dealer for only $2,500.
The 3D engine cost $6 million to build and half a million dollars a month to maintain.
By spring 2000 the bugs were fixed and the site took about $500,000 in sales in two weeks, right before venture funding evaporated.
Fashionmall.com bought the brand, domain, and Miss Boo for less than $2 million, while Dan Wagner paid $250,000 for the core software.
Wagner built Venda on that technology and sold it to NetSuite in 2014 for $50 million, and the Boo.com address now redirects to Hostelworld.

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